Titanomachy
by KhamanV
Summary: The City is the last bastion of mankind, but not always regarded as a sanctuary for those fragmentary people. For at least one band of pioneers, they chose their own destiny - to fight back a scrap of Earth for themselves far away from the Traveler. But when a young pioneer stumbles across a seeking Ghost, will everything change for the desperate colony?
1. Where Mortals Dare

Titanomachy

_Of pale immortal death, and with a pang_

_As hot as death's is chill, with fierce convulse,_

_Die into life _~ Hyperion, John Keats,

1. Where Mortals Dare

. . .

Venn tossed her the binoculars, grinning as she easily caught them in one hand while scrambling up the rubble towards him with the other. "It's back, l'il Miss Ghostie Girl."

"You don't know it's the same one." Beck shoved the older boy hard with her shoulder. He mock-staggered, shifting to the side to let her get a better position. She put the binoculars to her eyes, swiftly changing their focus to pick out the tiny construct flitting over and through the nearby ruins.

Venn might as well have stopped existing for her. He spoke again anyway, watching her sway around to keep the little thing in view. "In my defense, they _do _all kinda look alike."

"You were right. It's the same one." She sounded distracted.

Venn arched a dark eyebrow at her. "What did I just say?"

"Same scratches on the top." She flicked the device into a tighter focus and leaned forward, as if the extra few inches would help her. "Same ding. Little guy's been in some scraps all by his lonesome. This is his fourth visit."

"Fifth gets you an extra punch on your guest card." Venn watched her tug the dinged-up leather journal out of her pocket. Her tracking book. He tried to not read too much over her shoulder – it was mostly in her own shorthand, functionally a code anyway. He remembered some of the details enough to suss out what she meant.

_3.1: Thrall inc – small pat/NE scrap. No command fig_

_3.3: Ghost sighted (1__st__)_

_3.4: near contact, two aco, possible smoke? Da info_

_3.4-2'' ghost ag. same?_

And so on. He looked at some of her diagrams, marking out a rough of the area with notes on where the sightings occurred. Beck was the second best tracker in the tiny community, the pride of Angela, their security chief. Also the top tracker. Not that any of this cut ice with her Da – track only, no contact, no engagement. It was understandable. The colony couldn't afford any losses, and to lose the daughter of the founder? Venn twisted his lips and watched the distant dot of the Ghost spiral up and away again. "Still nothing," he lilted, being a turd for the sheer teasing joy of it. "Better luck next time, little guy."

"We should move." Beck slung the binoculars around her neck and tugged at him, flashing a gesture at the three younger kids puttering around at the base of the rubble. Their charges always got bored quick, even if her trips meant a roaming away from the hidden beast pens. The yaks were being particularly stinky this summer, pale and penned up underground, getting only the barest bit of fresh air and light they could risk. There had been a lot of incursions lately, and today bore all the hallmarks of more. "He moves that fast, it means incoming. He's three for three, this won't be any different."

That put his eyebrows up into his hairline. "We're exposed out here-"

"That's why we gotta _go." _She pulled hard at his arm this time, getting him off his ass. "And not a damn word to my Da when we get back, alright?"

"Well if they get too close, Beck-"

"If you shut up and move, they won't!" Beck didn't bother to scramble down carefully – she swung down a single handhold and then dropped the rest of the way to the ground, startling the kids they were supposed to be watching. She shooed them ahead of her and they scattered, knowing the drill.

In the distance, the Hive dropship rumbled into existence over the ruins of the old mining operation. The low, almost inaudible frequencies rattled through their bones even as the small group legged it into the shielding cover of the tall grass and the outermost, carefully wild-looking rice paddies.

. . .

Beck avoided Dallas's stare, trying her best to just seem like she was focusing her entire being on the milky, hearty stew in her clay bowl. "This is really good, Da. Was it Angela's turn around the kitchens? Because Venn was with me and the kids today and he's the only other one that can get that stuff edible." She licked a fleck of rice off the side of her hand. "I hate yaks. I know I'm not supposed to say that, but I really hate those yaks." She crinkled her nose. "They were fartin' all morning."

"It was my turn, and I know perfectly well Venn was with you today. We set up the schedule together, after all."

She hauled the bowl up to her face again, trying to hide the flash of terror. "Wow, Da! You did great!" _Did he rat?_

"He didn't rat you out. Nor did Santo, or Meela, or Wu." The three kids. "Or their parents." His voice was measured and even. She took a hesitant glance up at his face and saw the rock wall there. She was in deep yak dip. Gulping down the rest of dinner did nothing to settle her now-churning guts.

Dallas sighed, scruffled his knuckles through his greying beard. "Nobody needs to rat you out. First you slide in here like you weren't an hour late. Then you get extra helpful. The pottery wasn't scheduled to be organized for another two months. That's a hearty clue, honey."

"Why leave off for later what can be done today?" She chirped the words, lifting her shoulders in a shrug.

"You are a rotten liar, Rebecca. Your face was made for honesty." He reached out and patted her cheek with unusual softness. It meant he was gearing up to be in one hell of a mood. She braced herself. "More like your grandmother than your mother – your mother could spin fables for days, each one more fantastic than the last. Fantasy, that was her world. My ma... that's what you remind me of." He grunted. "She told me stories about our ancestors. True ones, the best kind."

"I know, Da. You've told me."

"You hear 'em and you don't listen." He put his bowl down with a thunk. "Frontier days. Hard days, spun up all pretty for stories later. All that shit about old Texas Rangers and the good guys in white hats." He shook his head. "Back then, you didn't know what was right or wrong until the guns were in hand and you saw who chose to shoot or not. Back when the _invaders_ were the people that were there _first._" He thumped his hand down on the table for emphasis.

"I know, Da." Her gaze flickered up to the hand-drawn map of the area, marked up with pinyin and nearly forgotten Tibetan script – a priceless artifact that marked all the old Haixi mining tunnels they lived in day by day. "We fought our way out here, away from the City. Cost us so much to get this far. We're the frontier people now. That's important. We're taking it back."

He shook his head, not mollified. "You were too little to remember the worst of it. I think that's good, but sometimes I wish you knew some of the lessons we were taught firsthand. If you _knew, _Beck, you wouldn't take such stupid risks."

"Da."

"I can't lose you, too." He lifted her head and looked her full in the face. She winced internally. There were two subjects that were verboten in their home – what happened to Mom, and the City. He was really on a full tear to be skirting around both topics. "We've made something out here, honey. Something nobody can take from us. A piece of Earth back in human hands, and we did it without those fucking Guardians." She winced again at the profanity, this time visibly. "People need symbols as much as they do a good, stable society. Something to believe in. As long as you and I can keep this place together, keep that chain going, the other families will stick with us. And after that, long after we know we've got this place safe from all comers, we can grow."

She chewed her lip. If his next tack was to ask her how things were going with Venn, she didn't know what she was going to do. She and Venn had held long conferences before about how obvious their families were in trying to set up their futures, and how little either of them were interested in the other. Venn had a happily reciprocated crush on Angela's daughter, and Beck had no time or patience for the discussion otherwise. She decided to try and head him off. "The future's a long way away, Da. Everyone here is behind you completely. We've got this."

It seemed to pause him. He stood up and took both their bowls, placing by the washbin before looking back over his shoulder at her. "You and Venn are good friends."

She froze.

He smiled, the worst of the storm over. "Just friends." He looked away and took a rag out of the bin, slinging it over his shoulder while he rustled for the hard cleaning bar the Alasia family produced for the colony. "I told you, Beck. You were made for honesty. Well, maybe that too is a long way off." He sighed. "So what'd you see out there, today? Anything I need to know?"

"Hive ships are showing up a lot more. I'm careful, Da, but they're definitely patrolling the area now. Don't know if it's to be a regular stop upcoming, but we're gonna have to lay low with the smoke for a bit."

"You think they've found traces of us?"

She thought of the little Ghost, wondered what it was up to right then. "I don't think so. I think they're keeping an eye out for something else. Makes 'em tricky, though. They're apt to be on guard."

"We'll have to cut back the yak field trips." He laughed as she groaned aloud. "Yeah, they're gonna stink that much more, hon. Get your daycare to scrub 'em down. That'll make the runts tractable, yeah?"

That drew a laugh. "Everyone gets to smell like yak!"

"Frontier hardships, honey. The things they don't tell you in the books." He looked over and gave her a wink. "Then it gets better. Always gets better."

"Because we're gonna make it that way."

"Give your cranky old Dad a hug. Then get some rest. Because I know you'll be doing something stupid tomorrow, too."

She left herself be folded into a big bear hug, almost old enough now that any one could be the last between an adult and a child. "I'll be careful."

"Yeah, you better be." He spoke the words into her hair as she squeezed back. "Damn the colony. You're what I got left, Beck."


	2. Titan Rising

2. Titan Rising

. . .

Beck left in the morning, not bothering to sneak. There was no point in trying. Angela was on gate duty, staring her down with sharp dark eyes over a thin, aquiline nose. The woman kept her russet brown hands folded over her armor, her voice wry and smooth. "Dallas said you'd be coming through."

"Sorry, Angela. Not trying to put you in the middle of anything."

The tall woman took the apology with a slight tilt of her head. "What's out by that old rustbelt that's so interesting?" She jutted her chin at Beck. "We mapped it least a dozen times while you were a babe. Nothing there except the Pipes. You best not be messing around with those."

The Baigong Pipes. Smashed into the gloveboxes of dozens of ancient cars were Chinese pamphlets about the apparently natural formation jutting out of the earth in the lake and some of the other caves nearby. Beck knew two things about them – some tested radioactive, and the old civilization thought, back in the twentieth, twenty-first centuries, that they'd been built by aliens.

If only they'd known what the future held. A bunch of rocks weren't the problem. Besides, they were probably just really old, fossilized trees.

"I promise, I am definitely not messing around with those." Beck lifted her hand to show her open palm. "If I grew a second head, I'd never stop arguing with myself." When in doubt, go for the old radioactive mutant joke.

Angela allowed a half-smile. "Well, when you get your fill of whatever it is, Silvana's on yak wash duty and could use a finishing hand later. I hear tell that was your idea."

"Scrub them bubbles!" She chanted the words, something goofy she'd read once on a piece of trash. "They could use it."

"Lord, could they ever. Shoo on, then." She flicked her hands at Beck. "Have fun."

. . .

"Oh wow," she muttered to herself, Venn's borrowed binoculars in hand. "Two days in a row. You think you found a scent, didn't you? Whatcha got?"

Beck shifted on the rubble mound, a different one than the day before. This one had a ledge she could lunge to in half a heartbeat, should her lungs start rattling in her chest with the signs of a dropship. She pulled the binoculars away for a moment to scan the sky; a hard-wired habit drilled into every member of the colony. All the Hive needed was one slip-up, one whiff of the scent of humans, one taste of the ozone from an electrical spark, and they'd drop on the thirty-odd families and dozens of other single pioneers with everything they had. The whole colony, gone in seconds. Even if Dallas and the founders had taken all the armaments from the City they could carry, they'd have no chance to fight back – the one grudging admission he'd grant the Guardians, when deep in his cups. So they'd packed for survival instead. Hide and grow.

Risky. So risky. For a second, all her doubts moved into her stomach. She really did need to be more careful. Not just for her father.

And so moved by a sudden shift in perspective, she nearly fell off the rubble mound when the Ghost uttered a high pitched whistle and then dove for a distant rust pile, just out of her view.

Sensibilities and wild curiosity warred, with the obvious winner cheering for dumb ideas everywhere. Picking out good cover along her chosen path, Beck jumped down from the pile to chase after it.

. . .

Beck crept silently over the rusted metal awning. There was the Ghost, scanning something in a pile of trash. She'd only been in this corner of the aboveground mining facility once before. Once, and then marked it off her list of exploration. Looked like there'd been a fight at some point in the past. She had a private desire to not stumble across skulls if at all possible – death was a reality in the colony, but it didn't mean she wanted to get up close and personal with it when just out screwing around.

The Ghost uttered another whistle, this one low and soft. The rubble shifted somehow. She couldn't quite make sense of how until she realized the little construct was somehow deconstructing the trash – atomizing it, maybe. To feed? To use? She didn't know.

The rubble shifted again, slid into a spreading mess with a racket. _"Drat,"_ said the Ghost. _"I was trying to not do that. Mm. Physics, probability, chaos theory. It always comes down to what might inconvenience one most."_

It spread out, little triangles of armor flowing into an open pattern, oddly mesmerizing. The blue 'eye' in the center spun around to regard her, the outer armor reforming around it. The top triangle shifted forward and then back, like a furrowing brow. _"That noise may draw unwanted attention."_

Beck scuttled back, out of view. Did it see her?

_"Yes, that was for your benefit. Please slip forward again. Seeing you will help me offer an advisory route out, should we need to hasten your exit."_

She lifted her head again. "I'm good. I know what I'm doing."

_"Ah. You are familiar with the area. That is interesting."_ Its tone was bland music, mechanical in lilting tones. The triangles flowed again. She swore it looked like a shrug. _"Humans, and this far away from the City. Very interesting."_

"What are you looking for?"

_"You attempt to distract me from the pertinent question with a diversionary one of your own. Amusing. Regardless, little one, I have at last found what I seek."_

She opened her mouth, about to make a self-deprecating crack about how she was clearly not what the Ghost wanted, when she glanced over at the trash heap – and met a pair of gold eyes in a black and blued steel face.

Beck swore and toppled back in surprise, watching the robotic figure rise creakily to its feet.

_"Greetings, Guardian. I have sought you and only you over years and the unimaginable expanse of space. I am your Ghost, here to guide you towards your destiny." _For a mechanical voice, there was something like soft reverence in it. She lifted her head again and watched simple armor form around the Exo's shell, realizing that what the Ghost took in, it could also give. Transmutation. Her mouth silently formed the word "Wow."

The Exo turned away from them both. It seemed to be looking through the rubble near it.

_"I'm afraid your old weaponry is not only terribly out of date, but also unrecoverable. There is a depot nearby, and also a number of deceased Thrall that may have something we can salvage."_

The Exo still said nothing.

The Ghost turned towards her again. _"My apologies. Sometimes it takes a while for the Guardian to reassert themselves. He will be fully recovered shortly. Meantime, I advise you consider exiting. I don't think we have much time left before a patrol picks up the changes here."_

Beck kept her gaze on the new Guardian, stolidly uninterested in the actions around it – him. "Will you two be alright?"

_"Of a certainty."_

"But you just said you're unarmed." She chewed her lip, then made the offer. "Look... there's shelter near here. Let me help. I could-"

The unmistakeable low rumble filled the air, the earth, the broken metal. She looked up. The ship wasn't visible yet, but they had mere seconds before they were exposed. She reached out a hand and tapped at the Ghost, unmovable in mid-air. "Come on!"

Without looking behind her to see if they'd follow, she took off in a gallop.

. . .

The dropship tore the sky directly over the lost battlefield at the edge of the mine. She glanced over her shoulder, noted that the sanctuary she had been about to describe was no longer an option. The ship was going to course towards the northeast, directly exposing the lee to their scans. That made her stomach drop. Either bad luck... or they knew enough about the territory to start scanning the colony's standard hiding places. Motion was at the corner of her vision; the gliding Ghost and the heavy-footed Exo male. A pale white cloth hung at his waist, flapping as he ran, another gift from the Ghost. He might be truculent, but he was following with a steady pace.

From her current path, there weren't a lot of choices. Either the caves with the Pipes, a long and dangerous haul west with no real benefit to the three, or home. And that meant all sorts of risks to the colony.

Not to mention the wrath of Dallas.

She sped up as the rumble deepened, running it down in her mind with growing resignation. The handful of choices was really none. She'd offered her help. The colony was hell on revoking the outstretched hand, and she was trying to be the good example the people wanted.

Beck considered her situation with a solid amount of regret. She could have thought of that _before _she went tear-assing after a Ghost in a wasteland.

She led the little group towards the tallest grasses. They were going to make it into the covering shade just moments before the Hive scans picked them up, she was certain of it. Deep within, along the rock faces, was the camouflaged opening that would lead to home.


	3. Do Exos Dream

(apologies. I usually update more quickly on projects, but, uh, been playing the game.)

3. Do Exos Dream

. . .

Beck's father wasn't angry, standing in his place at the head of a tiny front guard made up of Angela and those handful of people she trusted with the heavy weaponry they kept in reserve for the worst-case scenarios. Standing like a stone and watching his daughter return, with a Ghost and its newly-born Guardian in tow.

He was furious. The lined face was pinched white as marble with the brows knitted together into one dark line that told a history of fury. Dark green eyes bored into hers and he said nothing – that was the worst of it, of course, that bone-cold deadly silence. She'd seen it once before and only once, as a little girl who should have known better than to run off into the unmapped cave and made it back safe. The fury that also masked fear.

Beck's heart dropped solidly into her guts, making them churn pure acid. Behind her, the Ghost emitted an almost imperceptible whistle. A sound of sympathy? She took it as such. And behind that, still machine silence.

"Rebecca," Dallas said at last. Flat tone. "We nearly lost the yak cavern. They went right-bloody-hell over it, stopped scans just shy. Another ten meters and they would have acquired lifesigns. Then they took towards orbit and phased out."

"Oh, thank goodness." She breathed the words, slumping slightly.

"That's not good news. They should _never _have been that close." His eyes were off hers now, onto the little group with her. The eyes narrowed. "And for what?"

_"__Greetings..." _tried the Ghost.

"Save it." He turned on his heel and gave Angela a curt nod. "Double patrols, watch for them to come back. They're going to be all but certain they missed something, keep coming back for the near future. Lay low, report in every fifteen."

"Da-"

"I don't want to hear it." He cut her off with a gesture. "Not now."

Now her anger spiked up, the thing she inherited most from him. "I gave them my hand," she snapped. "Guest rights, Da."

He paused, back still to her. Angela's gaze flickered over to her, a single eyebrow arched. Beck couldn't read anything in the expression otherwise. With another flutter in her stomach, she watched her father's shoulders sag a little. "Your business, then." He stormed off before she could ask any more questions, her mouth hung open.

Angela saved her, answered what she needed. "It's your house, too. He'll abide. Won't be more than grumpy, but he'll abide." She nodded at the tall Exo. "Welcome to Adytum, traveler."

Nothing. Beck was afraid to turn. She watched Angela instead, the gnarled, no-nonsense woman studying the Exo and keeping the results of her findings for herself. As usual. But before she left to arrange the new patrols, she gave Beck a single, curt nod. Of approval?

She didn't know.

_"__I'm sorry," _chimed the little construct, light and rueful.

"Not your fault. I offered." She turned and stared up into the Exo's face, the new Titan looking back, forever unreadable behind the yellow glowing light of his eyes. "And I meant it. My house is yours for rest until we can get you on the road again. And... uh. Food." She had no idea if Exos ate. Or what they did. "Fuel?" She went for a sheepish smile. "I'm sorry. I don't know. I've, uh, never met one of you before."

"_It is distinctly human around here."_

"Yeah, and Hive." She shuddered as the Ghost whirled amidst its whistling language.

_"__Also curious. The rest of the region is Fallen territory."_

"That's true." She considered. "Last summer we saw their dreg soldiers moving across the west fields. Didn't stick around. Had a nice, quiet winter, though a really hard one. Was good for the yaks."

The Ghost spun and reformed itself, seeming to file away what she was saying. _"May I ask how long your community has been here?"_

"Fifteen years!" She said it proudly, enjoying the Ghost's low whistle of what she figured was approval. "Going strong. We've expanded twice, even picked up a few wanderers here and there. It's tough work."

The Exo shifted his weight, causing the Ghost to spin and regard him before facing Beck again.

"And my manners are rusty." Feeling a little better, though still worried about her father's implacable reaction, she waved them towards the inner caverns. "At least get you some shelter over your heads. Later we'll worry about how to get you on the path to the C- get you on your way home."

. . .

The Ghost guided her towards some of the energy supplies; spare batteries they had and hydro-spanners that stored up nature's power to run their community's quiet, almost invisible grid. With its guidance, she found a way to put together a tiny, simple cube of light that could be siphoned off at need. The Exos, the Ghost implied, didn't eat as organics did, that was correct. But access to energy was always welcomed and the Guardian was still recuperating. _Like a milkshake? _She'd asked. The Ghost did its little 'shrug' and averred it was something like that.

The Exo took the cube from her hand with casual care, not grabbing at it or swiping it away from her. That was something, in any case. She wanted to ask if he was still just recovering, or if he had a problem with humans, or what. It was impossible to read anything from him. Maybe the Ghost could tell her.

Then again, the pair hadn't had much time together without her butting in. She excused herself politely and went to try and make some food for herself. And her father. Maybe that would be a way to patch things up a little.

. . .

She found him eating in silence in the little nook they used for their private kitchen. He didn't hear her come in, too focused on his small evening meal. Beck stood in the doorway and looked at him for a long while, realizing for the first time how old he looked. Dallas was only near fifty, but he looked far older. She wondered how much of that was her fault, and how much of it came from the responsibility he bore for the entire small community. It didn't really matter, the division's exact measurements. She had a hand in some of it, and the lines were deep now in his face.

She slipped in, noticing his face lift for a second, startled, and then went to get herself a bowl. From behind the stored bag of rice, she found the flat sweets she'd been working on – also made of some rice, but with sweet berries and seasonings pounded into dried sheets. Fruit jerky, and still a rarity. She took the largest of the sheets and placed it next to his hand without a word before taking the seat across from him.

He kept eating, not saying anything, but when he was done, he carefully put his hand on the peace offering. "These are good, Beck, but they don't fix things."

"Not trying to fix, Da, just open the door again. I'm sorry."

"The bitch of it is, I know you honestly mean it." He sighed and tore off a strip of the jerky, offering it towards her. "It makes it hard to stay angry, even if I have every right."

She kept quiet.

"Who's the Exo, then?"

She grimaced. "I don't know. His Ghost said he might still be recovering."

"Or he's just that taciturn. Some are." He shrugged. "Academic question. It doesn't matter. He's here."

To that, she also said nothing. Maybe a little lesson she'd picked up from the Exo. She worked at her bowl, knowing Dallas was watching her.

"You call the shots on guest rights. I assume they're looking to get out of here. I can support that. Hell, I'll do what I can to help." He leaned back. "They'll want to go south, probably. There's a tiny airstrip out that way. We did patrols there once upon a time, when you were tiny. No resources for us. No good salvage. But there were some old ships. Kestrels, maybe." She looked up to see his eyes narrow in contemplation. "Can't remember. Odd."

"Do you..." her voice trailed off, suddenly unsure about the question she wanted to ask.

He took her empty bowl and stacked it onto his. "My anger's tapped out for the day, Beck. Ask your question."

She swallowed. "Do you hate the Guardians? Are you that mad this one's here?"

"Honey, I'm just mad. We had a lot at risk today, _you _especially. But no, I don't like them. Don't hate them, but I don't like them, and I don't trust them. Big part of why I left. Why we all left."

"Why?"

"That is the question, isn't it? A big one. First time you've had the nerve to ask it."

"First time I really had a reason. Anything to do with that place upsets you." She chewed on her lower lip. "So I don't. Didn't."

He put his elbows on the table and leaned towards her, tired. "I don't like the big slick line they've got going for them. The last, best hope of mankind. That they are destiny incarnate or whatever. That they've been called by that big white ball to save all of us."

"You don't think we need to be saved?"

"Hell, we need to be saved big time." He snorted. "But those Guardians? In the end, they're people, Beck. Some sound older than they look under those helmets. Many aren't human. That's fine. But they don't act like any demigod, or rescuing angel. Destroyers, sometime, and I can respect that's what they need to be in the field. In the City, Beck? As fallible and prone to corruption as any mortal. They don't follow any destiny, despite what we're told. They got that human nature. They huddle up around ideas and gather into factions with selfish causes. For that, we could just as well save ourselves. That's exactly what I'm trying to do."

She felt like there was something around the edges of the monologue, something she wasn't being told. She went for it. "Why? What'd you see, Da? What happened?"

"You think you're old enough for this story, Beck?" He gave her a straight, even look.

"I'm old enough. You keep talking about responsibility, and how it's on me. If there's responsibility, there's also got to be honesty."

The even look broke into a rueful, creased smile. "Well, maybe you're old enough. And maybe I'm not young enough for the story anymore. I'll tell you this much – your mother and I had a place in the City, as suppliers. We felt safe enough, felt we had a purpose. But a handful of Guardians decided they needed more from us."

"You got shook down. By _Guardians?"_

"Not exactly, Beck. The Guardians have a lot of sway in the City, and some think they have needs that supplant the people just trying to survive. These ones decided their faction needed a lot more support than they were getting and rolled out to press for it. It wasn't that they thought they were being cruel. They thought – believe – that they deserved more for simply being what they were. Being chosen, being under some amorphous destiny. What they wanted, exclusivity and extra supplies from the farm we were managing, would ultimately destroy us. And no one would speak against it. Because they are held up to be walking legends, and that we need them. We, despite our role, were not. In comparison." He shrugged. "So we left."

She slumped back in her seat, absorbing that. There were no easy answers she could come up with. Hard life since the Collapse. Maybe the Guardians her father met had some right to push, there in that last safe place. Maybe that could mean too little for everyone else. It was a lot to consider.

She abruptly jerked around to look at the doorway with wide eyes as the chime interrupted her churning thoughts.

_"__May I enter?"_

"I don't have a baseball bat, so it'd be passing hard to stop you, little thing." Dallas grunted, tracking the construct as it fluttered into the kitchen nook.

_"__I apologize. I -literally- could not help but overhear. I apologize also for your experience in the City."_

"Not your fault, ping-pong."

It hovered, its points spinning and reforming, like it was trying to gather its own thoughts. _"Do you understand the problem of free will versus the need for destiny?"_

"It's a bit philosophical for a bunch of families trying to make it on their own." Dallas seemed to remember the sheet of fruit jerky and tore off another strip, chewing on it contemplatively. "Not likely to be a topic I have a lot of time for."

_"__I will be brief and begin with this much: You hold a truth about the Guardians. They are but people. Brought awake and set high with all the tools we can give them to fight. People, all the same. And like you, like all survivors, they have a right to free will._

_"__It is difficult to quantify the quandary simply. I should emphasize these are my thoughts, datastream compiled during my search. Wandering Ghosts have a lot of downtime." _Slow whirl. The 'front' hunched in for a second, like a wry wink. _"By choosing our Guardians, we press a violation of their will upon them. We force a direction to their life, which had come to an end previous. This is selected as the least undesirable option. To attempt to balance this out, once the new life is given, we are at their disposal. We heed _their _choices from this point; defer to their command. To do otherwise is to continue risking their free will, when we have already asked so much."_

The Ghost spun up and hovered over the table, a respectful distance from where Dallas sat, positioned neatly between him and his daughter. The gleaming blue light it emitted lay a shadow across the man's face, chiaroscuro portrait. _"A future achieved through force alone is no destiny, but tyranny. That is the way of darkness. Salvation must come from free choices, made in light. We take their life in service, and give them their will back. The side effect is, we cannot guarantee all choices made on the long road are good ones. This is the gamble we make: That given the ability to_ choose_ a better future, to rebuild a world, one forged in light, you will do so."_

Dallas grimaced. "That is a big-ass-gamble to be takin' on human nature. You little suckers ever read history books from a given race before committing to a stunt like this?"

_"__Yes."_

"Well. We are going to have to agree to disagree on whatever conclusions you drew out of our books."

_"__And yet, given a choice, you sacrifice your energy and your life to the salvation of others. All for the hopes of their better future." _It spun languidly, its voice becoming a light, quiet whistle. _"Not so different from our intentions, sir."_

Dallas tore another strip from the fruit jerky and passed it across to his daughter, who took it gingerly from him. Her expression was a lost and thoughtful one. It hurt to look at, because he could guess clearly enough at the ideas coming to her. Same look he'd seen before, on those he'd already lost. Free will. He knew all about hard choices, made quick and slow both. "You're getting on my nerves," he said, and hoisted himself up from the chair.

_"__I apologize."_

"Da?"

"Going to get some rest, Beck. So should you. Everyone's got plenty to think about." He patted the top of her head, reconsidered. Gave it a gentle stroke, remembering how soft her baby hair had been, how it had fluttered in the shoulder-slung satchel as they'd marched across tundra to reach ruined China. How clear it was she was going to resemble her mother. "Sleep good, hon."

. . .

In the morning, preparing for chores, she said the thing that he'd been dreading, the thing he saw in her eyes the night before. "Da," she said. Voice hesitant, drawing out the pain. He kept his back to her. "I want to go with them to the City. See for myself. Is that... I mean. If they'll let me. If you-"

"You're nearly an adult, Beck." He swallowed, feeling it go past the rocks in his throat. "You've made your own choices for years, and you've got a head full of questions."

"I want to come back, though. I won't be going to stay forever." He could hear her fidgeting, not really believing he'd already agreed. "Maybe make some trades, set up some contacts. Things we could use. If-"

"I'm not going to stop you. It's between you and that goddamn Guardian now." He fought to keep everything out of his voice. "He'll have some reason to let you. You know the high path to that airstrip I mentioned. Should be clear of that Hive patrol from the other day."

She stared at his back. "I'm sorry."

"If you're going, talk to the people in textiles, or in livestock, if they got any left. They'll know my name. Put up some help for you. There are good people in the City, too." He cleared his throat. There was nothing else he could find to say.

. . .

The Exo said nothing. It was the Ghost that agreed for them both, though it spun in place and spoke slowly, as if careful in its consideration. When the little town lined up to give cheerful and teary farewells to their leader's daughter, the new Titan sat underneath a pale blue awning and watched from afar, never blinking his diode gold eyes. Resting at his side was the archaic pulse rifle, a spare rummaged up and given to him by a tall woman as blank-faced as himself. He'd nodded once, plain gratitude.

That one understood.

While they waited for the girl, the Ghost recited to him the information he wanted. The litanies of combat. The only thing he thus far understood. Cared to understand.

The Ghost's murmurs of will were meaningless to him. And the girl?

The gold of his eyes dimmed. Next to him, the construct began its dissertation of the fall of the Warminds. He let it wash through the channels of his neuro-construction, knowing that what lay between the binary states of life and death was always war.


	4. On Holliday

4. On Holliday

. . .

The Ghost hovered on watch over the creaking Kestrel's control panel. They were on automated approach to the City, minutes away from breaching the cloud bank and skirting a mountain range that was part of the zone's natural protective boundary. Its lone blue eye didn't bother to watch the internal screen that stood in for a window, didn't need to. It knew the sights and didn't have the emotional attachment to that first view. It whirled in place, though, noting the still, silent figure of Beck in the rear seat. _"Got a view of the screen from there?"_

Her eyebrows knotted together as she pulled herself together enough to absorb the question, still feeling queasy from the transmat to the ship an hour previous. Everything about the trip to the airstrip had been uneventful, even easy. A single tombship had coursed over the horizon, blind to their hike. Finding a working ship among the rusting-out husks of the strip's hangar was even simpler – two of the large metal sheds had weathered the elements solidly and kept their contents in good shape. The worst had been some decayed components; handily replaced with the Ghost's guidance and Beck's quick fingers. The teamwork had earned a grunt from the Exo.

The transmat, though. Matter instantly transferred from one location to the other in less than the blink of an eye. One second, standing in a relic of days gone by. The next – in front of the seat chosen for her, and immediately ready to upchuck the breakfast of lean yak meat and fruit strip she'd had before setting out. "Uh. Mostly. I'm good." The Exo's head took up half the screen, but she was not remotely about to complain.

_"__We're on a smooth approach. It'll be safe for you to get up and have a better view. Regardless of what may come in the future, the first sight of a new place should be a fine one." _Again, that slow whistle that was something like reverence.

"Are you sure?"

The Exo shifted a little. To some surprise, she realized his motion it made for more space towards the front of the narrow cabin. She stood up, hunching a little, ignoring the slosh of stomach acid as her eyes widened.

The afternoon sun lit up the cloudbank like spun gold, parting as the Kestrel received the chime from the City's port Director that okayed it to enter its arrival lane. She almost heard the _woosh _of the engines as the ship banked around a tall peak that seemed far too close and then adjusted itself down another fifteen degrees.

The Traveler was visible first, incomprehensibly huge, a perfect sphere hung over the curved horizon. The light struck against it, a pure and gleaming white that highlighted the darker circular imprints along its surface. Impossible not to be drawn to the sight, to forget all other surroundings. Her mouth formed a word she immediately forgot as she realized that, no, this enormous pale glory was _not _perfect. The base of it was torn open, revealing massive structures of elegantly curved metal within – a God's sundered ribcage. A ruined world, resting amidst the landscape of another ruined world. "Oh," she breathed aloud, horrified. Against the mythic, eternal geometry of its figure, the Traveler's scars seemed like heresy.

Still it dwarfed the comparatively tiny City beneath it, majestic and broken both. Tall towers and half-intact spires still reached up towards the great sphere like an offering. She realized as their approach slowed for better control that these buildings were not at all small. The scale the last human city faced was simply too brutal by comparison. The city itself stretched for miles, forged into shining, interlocking geometries to to honor its hovering guardian.

It was beautiful. Forlornly beautiful, knowing there was nothing else like it left in the world.

The last stand.

Her gaze caught the glimpse of vast fluttering banners as the ship took one more sharp bank towards a tower that rose higher and closer than many others, realizing that the blinking lights atop it meant they'd reached their destination. And yet the Traveler still seemed incredibly far away.

_"__We're home," _hummed the Ghost, low. _"Now we begin again."_

. . .

Beck kept stumbling behind the Exo, unable to keep her head from whirling around to absorb some other new sight. Frames, those less-conscious figures, swept to and fro on busy work. Each one marked with various symbols that indicated its owner or its duty. She'd seen a few in her life, but they were always busted. One had been half-repaired at the colony when she was a child, and all it could do in its brief lifetime was sweep the same three-meter block and hum five seconds of some old tune called "She'll Be Coming Around The Mountain." These bore no such broken restrictions, moving along in their own narrow unseen lanes.

She stopped herself from staring at a knot of Guardians, at ease without their helms and watching her as she flushed. Each was a startling shade of blue and she could not square it with how laughably little she knew about the Awoken. She had a sudden suspicion she looked like a complete rube and didn't know what to do about it. She steadied her gait and resolved to follow the Exo wherever he was going through the hangar without further risks of slamming into a wall.

. . .

"_Greetings, Guardian." _The Frame hummed the words in a monotone, its robot fingers holding an electronic clipboard in either a fit of irony or as a prop. Surely it didn't actually need the device. _"Welcome to the City. A representative of the Vanguard will be here shortly, else you may enjoy unrestricted access to the Tower to introduce yourself directly to the three."_

The Exo grunted.

_"__May I ask your name and applicable path, Guardian?" _The Frame seemed to abruptly notice her. _"One moment, trouble verifying organic. Searching... searching... unable to verify ID. Please stand by! Please stand-"_

"Holster your hole, 47-83." A harried looking woman came up behind the robot and plucked the clipboard from it. "Oh, wow, you're not lying." From under a mop of straw yellow hair came a pair of squinting eyes. "I'm really sorry, sweetie. We got a glitch here or something."

"Glitch?"

"You're not in the system. No ID registered. You know, your chip?"

"Chip?" She felt like an idiot. "Maybe I don't have one."

The woman started laughing. "What'd you do, dig it out with a spoon?"

Beck considered that. "When are they put in? Is it at birth?"

The woman stopped laughing and began to study her carefully. "No, kiddo. About a year or so in at least, make sure it doesn't fuss around with first bone growth or some damn thing, I dunno. I never did med."

Beck flushed again. Dammit. She cleared her throat, internally begging her emotions to work with her. "That's why. I was a baby when I left."

"Ho-leeee _sh-" _The woman cut herself off, eyes widening in awe. "The new Guardian brought a refugee. From _outside_. An honest-to-god-brand-new-refugee."

The flush deepened. A few of the other lingering presences in the hanger now had their attention on the new Guardian and the human in tow, and their gaze had weight. She didn't expect any of this, didn't think there was going to be such a scene when she arrived. The woman seemed to take some mercy on her and shifted part of her laser focus.

"Okay, uh, big fella. Let me help finish you up and then we'll get the new miss sorted out."

New questions burst into existence with that simple statement. With that, a sudden rush of panic hit. Everything was too new, easily misunderstood. "I'm not exactly a refugee. Where will I go?" Her voice squeaked up its register without any ability to control it.

"We've got some humanitarian stations in the lower city, we'll get you somewhere. Don't you worry, hon. New folks aren't an every day thing anymore, but we're still always ready for 'em."

The lower city? Beck looked out the open back of the high hanger. The ground seemed impossibly distant from there.

The Exo creaked, startling her attention back to the situation. His voice was low and steady, sonorous bass notes and the implication of dully clanging metal pipes deep in the dark. Not quite a growl. No warmth to it, either. "Ghost marked me Titan class. Registering Striker-type. Vance-17. Girl's with me."

"Okay-"

"You've got room up here. Girl can take residence. I don't need it." The Exo stormed off in the direction of the Vanguard chambers, both humans staring after him. Vance's brusqueness was so pure that even the Ghost hung still in the air for a second before darting after the Guardian.

"Wow. Okay. That happened." The woman chuckled and pushed her hand through her mop of straw, catching Beck's wide eyes with her own. "Exos are like anybody else. I mean, sorta. What I'm trying to say is that there can be all types. Some are chatty, some are easy-going, and some take the art of being laconic as far to the Reef and maybe even past as they bloody can, all I'm saying. You know?"

Beck kept her mouth shut.

"I'm Holliday. This is my turf, but it's running slow today – good thing, let me tell you, been a rush previous – and so I've got a bunch of time to get this sorted out, until I run out of time, and then I know like five competent as hell people to pick up for me. So." She grinned down at Beck. "Who're you, again?"

. . .

The Ghost found her later, wrung out, wild-eyed, exhausted, bearing both a sore arm and a freshly made chip ID in the surprisingly large space intended for a new Guardian. Four rooms, plus a half-kitchen with a bare kit of long-term supplies, and some sort of securable load-out room. She hadn't messed with that. There was a handful of what looked like heavy ammo supply cases scattered around in there and she'd long been drilled to not toy with ordinance. _"So I see you're settling in," _it hummed, hovering over her where she'd flopped like a rag onto a reconstructed cloth-plas couch. Wryly, even, the final note of its voice drawling low and heavy.

"I want to sleep but I'm too confused," she managed, her voice slurring a little. "Where's, uh, Vance?"

_"__Sitting outside. He implied he had what he needed." _

"Can I ask a really rude question?"

_"__It is difficult for me to take offense."_

"Is there something seriously wrong with him?"

_"__There is not. He is precisely the Guardian I have sought for quite some time. And before you fester the question," _another light, amused chime, _"__I'm firing on all cylinders myself."_

Cylinders? She stared at the tiny figure.

_"__That is a joke." _It spun and whirled. _"__In time, possibly by the first heavy rain, he will then choose to live inside. I don't think he holds a concern about your presence, if that is a worry. Select a room and go about your life. I believe your father left you with suggestions on how to proceed from here."_

"It sounded simpler this morning."

_"__I'm sure of it. But my Guardian did you a great kindness, though I realize it isn't plain. City access will be quite easy from here. With a Guardian's pass, you have a considerable amount of freedom to move. Please do not abuse it – it will reflect on us."_

"Can I help you at all? I mean, if I'm allowed to stay here, I'll pull my own weight around with keeping it up. That's a given."

_"__You helped already. From here, you ought to make your own way."_

"Cue free will speech?" She grinned up at it.

It danced, reforming lightly for her. _"__You've heard it. I dislike repeats. I find it a poor use of datacycles, certainly. But I will share a philosopher's words with you instead."_

She sat up to listen.

_"__From a single stone, a road. From a single spark, a flame. From a single choice, a world." _It trailed into silence.

"Who said that?"

The Ghost gave a light whistle and flew outside.


	5. Lock Up The Wolves

5. Lock Up the Wolves

. . .

Banshee hadn't wanted to upgrade the old pulse rifle. Dismissed it as a relic, tried to upsell him on some fancy new fusion rifle he'd just got in from a supplier that he wouldn't name. Offered a ten percent glimmer discount – New Guardian discount, the gunsmith tried to call it. What a crock. Nobody appreciated the classics anymore. Vance wound up bartering two heavy ammo clips he didn't need or want; set up a designer bribe through some Exo-addled jackboot that claimed to be with FWC (also a crock, zit-faced human wasn't wearing the colors, but what the hell, he paid out what was promised), and got his damned stability upgrade.

Now the dented, dingy weapon handled like death's own javelin in hands too thick for much subtlety. He shifted carefully on the cracking shingled roof, hoping like wildfire that none of the decaying plates would slide off and give him away. The slow track, the play of a longer shot – not too long, though, the rifle wouldn't like that. Wasn't his usual style, but the dregs had themselves a hands-on kind of leadership today. Vance-17 had enough pride pinging around inside his blued-steel shell to not eat a fall, even a temporary one, unless and until he had to.

The captain was a big one. Golden light gleamed dully inside Vance's jaw; electronic predator smile. Meant an easier target. The Fallen's helm gleamed sunset orange and Vance took the shot, allowing himself that taste of satisfaction at just how well the gift rifle handled as he squeezed the trigger for a tightly controlled burst.

Both captain and Guardian were immediately pissed off – the captain had an emergency mobile shield that ate most of the forward momentum and basically pinged the incoming off the multi-armed freak's temple. Migraine shot. A bunch of tightly placed pebbles, tossed at a stray rabid dog. Well, that was just _wonderful_.

All hell broke loose as the dregs flung their hands up in the air in shrieking offense and rushed at him like a line of empty thralls with their captain hooting plenty of murderous advice behind. Vance heard something ominous cock inside the shotgun-sized weapon the big meat was carrying.

Rough night coming. Screw it. He threw himself into the fray, death in his fists and a metallic roar in his throat. He ate what was coming and spat it back in their faces unchewed.

The captain got him back a good one as he charged in on approach, short-range ordinance thumping sharp into the side of his-

(_SIGINT echo echo forty-three repeating trans from number station ninety-four)_

steely skull and he elbowed back into the captain's jaw with a crunch that cracked the

(_stars do you see the stars they cracked do you see thi-)_

inhuman mask. A dreg grabbed him from behind and he spun to shake it off, stomping on its throat for its trouble. The Ghost whistled a high-pitched warning and Vance got grabbed again, three more howling mad things on his side and they shoved him towards the rusted out truck and his skull-plates began to-

(..._red sky red sky torn in half dead stars and beyond is night...)_

_(SIGINT CAN YOU REA-)_

crack open and all his thoughts were falling out.

_(4-3-66-6345-313-313-alpha-niner-OH MY GOD SIGINT IS OFFLINE)_

_(can you see?)_

_(alone now)_

Vance shook his head, the screech of radio static and jangling chaos in his breaking skull. It angered him, the detritus of a blank past others worried at and he just didn't have time for. Trying to regain his balance, his place in the dance of death and the captain was revving up for a charge and a reload both. Aw, crap. Ghost better be ready on that regen.

The captain roared and Vance muttered aloud, "Taking you all with me, we play it like this."

A firestorm filled the air and Vance met it in a defiant smash of charged power. Before the screams began again in the snapping flickers of data inside his cranium, he felt primal delight. The captain died first, his outline shredding apart under the demands of arcing light.

_(they left us here, left us here with nothing.)_

_(we're about to die)_

The static drifted away into the empty space between moments, followed by the soft hum of the patient Ghost.

. . .

Beck let herself into the tower residence, stinking like the carmine and indigo dye pots she'd been wading through all evening. Her hands were blotched in a dozen different hues all the way up to the elbow. It'd be days before they came out, and by then, there'd be a fresh layer to scrub at. She sighed, exhausted in mind and body both.

The City didn't need a civilian tracker's skills. The Guardians could do that and more. Didn't matter that there weren't an infinite amount of them available, the collective faith in the last line of defense was resolute. She saw gaps in the ruined metal walls far in the distance; places in low ground a small force could come in and wreak havoc. But then, likely they did, too. The Vanguard held no fools in its ranks. She'd already seen that much for herself.

They didn't have much need for small hands on livestock in the City, either; farms and Frames and distant fields worked together to keep everyone fed. The rest was artificial, reconstitutions from technology scraped together before the collapse. Sufficient, occasionally tasty, but somehow hollow. So it was crafters that held the second highest amount of sway in the civilian populace. Those with connections to useful combat suppliers were the first, but individuality meant something special to both Guardian and survivor. A family that had known her Da was long since out of the food business, but they had connections to one of the bigger dyers in the lower city. It was a job, kindly offered on the strength of old friendships. It was something to do while she got her bearings proper.

And it kept her out of the way of the truculent Guardian, a major plus. For a couple weeks now, she'd made sure they mostly ducked each other. It seemed to keep him content. Maybe he was getting his own bearings by now.

Thinking of this, she slipped quietly through the central room and its comfy lounge and nearly jumped out of her skin when some shape blinked bright gold at her. On instinct, she slapped at the light panel and chased out all the shadows.

"Sorry!" she blurted. Vance-17 shifted on the lounge, looking away from her. Her observation skills were still sharp and she figured out what was off about him immediately. Half his skull-plates looked fresher somehow. Newly polished. It meant a death, she realized with a chill. Pieced back together by his Ghost, the little construct that was now flitting and zoomed among the handful of other rooms thinking whatever it was Ghosts did. She wrung her dyed hands together. "You had a hard patrol," she said, not really meaning to say it aloud.

Vance grunted. "They're dead. I'm alive. Good deal." He hoisted himself upright after what was for him a monologue, causing the plain white mark to flutter back into position at his hip. Noticing that gave her a quick, wry smile. Most of the Titans she'd seen so far took on some sort of emblem. House ally, a gift from someone in gratitude, a prize, or some other special meaning only they knew. Not Vance. Like everything he could control about his appearance, it would always be the blank slate. Shame she worked for a dyer; she could have at least hooked him up with a nice blue to match his plating. She knew better than to offer, though.

That bit of wisdom didn't keep her from pressing on. He looked alright, she supposed, but he gnawed at her. The fact that the Exo had spent part of the day dead while she stomped around some indigo plants was jarring to contemplate. She kept blurting questions instead. "Fallen incursion?"

"They used to call it Poland. Seen its share of wars before. Seeing more now." The gold eyes flickered towards her, grudging. "These were Kings, not Devils."

Fallen factions. She'd asked the Ghost about them once, looked at things when they were left around unhidden. Sometimes people in the city didn't like to talk about the wolves at the door. Now she tried to not act surprised that the Exo was being unusually communicative. "That's a little strange. Devils range all the north, I thought."

"They do." Another soft grunt, almost satisfied. "Did. Trouble coming. More patrols. More to kill."

He left the room, the Ghost fluttering in to replace him. Its whistles were jovial in contrast. _"__And how was work?"_

"Dye pots don't shoot. Want to trade?"

_"__Not even remotely. You asked a question this morning."_

Beck snapped her fingers, feeling that question rise back to the surface of her tired thoughts. "Right! About getting some sort of communication going with Adytum."

_"__I've found some information on low-wave/ELF systems you may peruse. There is difficulty in transmissions being overrun by natural wave interference, so such systems were once rare. Humans first used it underwater for militaristic purposes, but it was troublesome on several levels. Pre-Collapse its uses were more varied but still slight in comparison to the tools they had access to. An obscure methodology. For your purposes, mimicking the lightning and the magnetic cries of the earth... might be perfect. A simple camouflage. Difficult to chase."_

"Neat. Sounds complicated, but neat." She chewed over the suggestion.

_"__Anything worth doing may seem insurmountable at the outset. We'll look at what I have – tomorrow, after patrols, if you like – and then I have some suggestions on material acquisition."_

Its open offers of assistance touched her. Was this normal behavior for Ghosts? "Thank you very much. I appreciate it."

From the room Vance had gone into – the load-out room, she realized – she heard the mechanical sounds of weaponry being stripped and slapped together again, so efficient it had its own rhythm.

She found herself falling asleep to it later.


	6. Don't Talk To Strangers

6. Don't Talk To Strangers

. . .

Vance returned to his tower lair cleanly re-plated and reborn more nights than not. It didn't seem to affect him, but how could anyone ever tell? Logic said there had to be a psychological effect to facing death with the same sort of daily repetition a basic mortal might greet lunch with. But maybe there just wasn't for Guardians. Maybe that was part of the selection process – can a being's spirit be welded together post painful demise from fresh meat and bone and steel and stars repeatedly and not go completely psycho? If the answer is yes, a Ghost could be waiting for you, too!

Beck chewed on her lip and watched the Exo tromp out for his patrol, wondering what it was like inside his skull. When he spoke, he still gave away nothing of himself. And he was patrolling more – if they asked for volunteers on a job, he went. If a Guardian dropped patrol, he went. If the wind changed... yeah, he was probably heading for his plain, rickety Kestrel. Still the same one from the Chinese airstrip.

The Ghost never complained. It was not to its style to confide to her. Pontificate, puzzle over blueprints, explain the basics of mechanical engineering, sure. But it didn't betray Vance's thoughts or its own worries. Perhaps it was simply confident in its choice. Unlike Vance, who she could coax a few words out of here and there, the Ghost was a monolith. If it didn't give an answer, that was the end of the line.

There was something in their symbiosis to envy, she figured. Knowing you had a place and a path, even if once it was offered to you, good luck figuring it out. She thought about the conversation back home a lot, the questions of making hard choices, and making sure they were good ones. The Ghost had faith. She still wasn't sure how to define that concept.

Meanwhile, to her efforts, the little thing had a bit more mercy in its guidance. ELF wavesliders weren't entry level mech kits to slap together, but she'd gotten something functioning last week. Just an introductory experiment. The Ghost had been thoroughly approving of her progress. However, if she wanted to test it on a longer range (maybe get a receiver on Vance's Kestrel before a patrol; _there_ was a conversation she dreaded), she needed more supplies.

The Ghost's advice took her into the back alleys of the City, down the industrial routes past reluctant Dead Orbit suppliers and lurking vendors with suspicious-looking wares that smelled like relics out of charnel houses. Probably were – there was so much salvage out there where most humans didn't dare to live. Some civilians built themselves a good life scouring nearby areas, especially after skirmishes that drifted too close to the last bastion. Echos of the massacre at the Gap. The dead giving up what they had for the living few.

The line of work tempted, occasionally. A way of feeling like she was contributing more than she was. Then she looked at the scrappers' scars and the hollow behind some of their eyes and rethought the Wasteland Explorer bit again. Better to have a community behind you than go it alone.

Better to be a Guardian. Beck shivered a little, thinking of Vance's too-clean exterior, and nearly missed the electronic salvage shop she was looking for.

. . .

"Well, it's a plan. You got one?"

The other figure, the taller one, shook his head and stepped back. He said something unintelligible and flicked his hand towards the shop Beck was leaving. It was the action that caught her eye, not the words. She glanced at them and then looked away again when the tall one narrowed dark eyes at her in a warning. Salvagers, probably. They were in thick cloaks, prepared to ignore her if she kept moving on. Probably the best choice. She turned the corner of the shop, leaving their sight.

The voices were low, but still carried to her. _"__She's gone. Anyone else?" _

Rustling motion. The sound of a hand slapping at fabric – one of the awnings to a closed street vendor being rustled. Stomping around. The slap of metal and plasteel against cloth. They were _armed_. That wasn't good news. The close-cropped hair at the nape of her neck prickled, sounding the alarm. The rest was curiosity. That same old digging curiosity that got her to the City in the first place.

She could imagine their stretch of alley in her mind, restructuring it. Not unlike listening for the skulk of a handful of thralls that might have gotten a sniff of yak. Tracking intruders that drifted too close to the border caves. Something about their furtiveness struck that old, instinctual alarm in the back of her mind and she stuck to the closest wall instead of moving on. Her breathing slowed and her eyes narrowed to focus on all the sounds around her. If they came up the alley, she was going to be outed. Through her narrow squint, she picked out possible escape routes if things went sour.

_"__We're clear. Look, I don't have a problem with the plan. I have a problem with the possible outcomes. We can't control the after-play."_

_"__We can, if we pressure him right. He'll have no choice but to go our way once we explain the score. He's not stupid." _Low voice, baritone. Naturally confident.

_"__Not enough motion behind that move, I'm telling you. We don't have the backers. This isn't the right time." _The thinner voice, from the taller, hardier built figure. Caution in his words.

_"__I can get them. Just a little more. Little longer. Look, the faction's already made just the inroads we need to get a handful of Guardians to see it our way – and that's all we gotta have, just one or two, and we can snowball this right down their throats."_

_"__You're running out of time on this session." _Reluctant. She pictured him crossing his arms, taking his last crack at talking this other man out of whatever he had in mind.

_"__I got three more before the Consensus settles the books on the quarter, and Speaker's in our corner even if he doesn't think about it that way. There's a shindig in a few nights. I'll do some gladhanding and some speechmaking and I'll get some of 'em on our side. Maybe even a Warlock. Rey's got some fresh ones that might be easily swayed. They drop that fate and thanatos crap like – who was that guy, that Roman king with all the philosophy - and people follow the smart noises. Good investment if I get one of them behind us."_

The other voice was full of doubts. _"__Man, I dunno. We get caught, this is treason. We risk the faction's ejection. Do you wanna end up like Concordat?"_

_"__We won't._ The other was implacably calm. _"__I'm ready, Troy. For the City. Are you?"_

Fresh rustling reached her ears, touching her instincts again. It was time to go. She padded off, as quickly and as soundlessly as she could, holding the bag of salvaged electronics in place on her shoulder to keep it from rattling.

Just like Da always taught her.

. . .

"And that's what I heard. I mean, I don't understand half of it. What's Concordat?" She nudged her bag of supplies with her knuckles, feeling a little sheepish now about worrying about what she'd overheard. Maybe it was nothing.

The Ghost whirled once, in its place above Vance-17's still shoulder. _"__A faction that forgot its way. They made choices that were... argued by some to be incompatible with light."_

"Were they?"

_"__I have no opinion to offer. Politics are for the living." _A wry, dismissive whistle. _"__Could you identify these men?"_

"No." Beck frowned. "I've got the partial name of one of them and they're worried about their own faction. That's genuinely all I have. I told you everything."

"Not enough." Vance leaned forward and steepled his fingers. The gold eyes didn't look at her. "Not marking a bad play. You got what you could. Not enough to go anywhere, though."

_"__I must concur. This is the vapor of nuance, though the word 'treason' is eye-catching. More would be required to approach the authorities. We cannot even be sure of what we'd be warning them of."_

"What about this 'shindig' they were going on about?"

"The games. Parties after." Vance grunted. "Bunch of empty-headed skins and 'bots jumping around to show who's got more steel in their spine. Blow themselves up and let the Ghosts do extra work to show off. Big deal sometimes. Bettors. Suppliers drop prizes on their favored few."

Beck raised a single eyebrow. If Vance spoke more than three words on a given topic, it meant a strong opinion. He apparently had a hell of a one here. He glanced back, the glitter of gold seeming to catch her expression.

"Could kill our enemies instead." He sighed. "One in three days. Big showdown. Lots of glimmer to flash around. Lots of big names rolling in quiet."

"And whoever these guys are will be th-"

Vance shook his head, cutting her off and answering the unfinished statement. "Not me. Know my face 'round here already. Know I won't play. More waste of time."

She felt frustration creep up the sides of her neck, coming out in the tightness of her voice. "Well, do you know any other Guardians you could trust to fish out some more information?"

"I go alone. Always."

She set her jaw and knitted her hands around the mouth of her supply bag. "Fine. I'll try to think of something else. Maybe there's someone I can find."

"It's not your problem. Why care?" He got up and left the room, dismissing the topic with finality. She resisted an immature urge to yank a piece of half-melted scrap out of the bag and chuck it at him. The Ghost caught the flex of her hands and tipped its points at her, its slow whirl distinctly mollifying. Then it flew after the Exo, silent.

. . .

Wiring scraps of delicate machinery together wasn't the sort of activity best paired with angrily slapping hands and distracted, pissed-off muttering underneath one's breath, but she seemed unable to calm herself down. Vance's brusque dismissal of her concerns was just right over the line. Yes, there were good points in his view, and the Ghost's.. It was completely possible she'd overheard nothing important. But the way he just blew off the conversation... she grit her teeth, the soldering iron starting to slip in her sweating hands.

The low whistle came from behind, careful to not startle her. _"__That poor circuit board did no harm to anyone."_

"Might be your ancestor, right?" She grumbled and set it down. "I'm sorry. I'm being pointlessly cranky."

_"__Not quite pointless. He has that effect on people. I find it a net positive." _She gave the Ghost a long, slow stare. _"__Usually. Well. I brought a suggestion, but it's a mildly risky one."_

"'Mild' and 'risk' don't exactly pair."

It spun, ignoring her pointed tone. _"__We have access to quite a number of supplies for a Guardian through the Tower's stores. They're always ready for anything. Or anyone. A little access, a solid excuse, and at least the basics are easily acquired."_

That tickle of caution hit her nape again, trying to puzzle it out. "What are you getting at?"

It explained. A cold ripple spilled down her arms. "That is a terrible idea."

_"__If you hold concerns about what you may have overheard, it's the best one on offer."_


	7. Costume Party

7. Costume Party

. . .

Beck shifted uncertainly under the weight of the heavy plasteel armor, feeling it pinch around the tight under-tunic at her waist. She could barely look down to be sure everything was in place – the helmet she wore did everything she needed, the embedded HUD full of flickering information and suit updates. Everything, except flex enough to let her see if her pants were sealed. She could see the tips of her boots and little else.

The hum came in low, from behind her shoulder. _"__Be still," _it whispered. _"__Your suit is fine. We sized correctly. Walk in easy stride and exude only confidence. In this, you might take a lesson from my Guardian."_

It had a point. Nobody ever questioned the sturdy Exo when he was on the move. The faith in Guardians was resolute enough that if one was on the move, it meant important business. Somewhere. Having the company of a Ghost was enough to unlock almost any door.

Including, most important to her at this moment, the door of a private club. A high Tower hall with huge screens on every wall displaying the carnage of a distant Crucible skirmish. They battled on Mercury, the Ghost informed her through the helm's interactive display. The small planet's surface shined, hard to see so close to the Sun's raging fires. The viewing screens, and likely the participants' helms, used a filter to cut back the gas giant's glare.

The two hulking humans on either side of the door stared down at her as she waited for their verdict, a comparatively tiny faux-Titan with a borrowed Ghost at her shoulder, and then they swiftly waved her through, knowing neither detail. No questions.

"That easy," she breathed into the helm, low enough to carry only through the comms direct to the Ghost. It had coached her on that technique, used tactically in the field.

_/:Oh, yes. That easy.:/ _The response scrolled onto the left side of the helmet's interior HUD. Now that they were in, the Ghost was going to play silent watch. There was a chance it'd be ask to leave once they found the right knot of drinking observers, but until then it hovered in its 'rightful' place above her left shoulder, watching and recording dutifully.

_/:This is a rumble; multiple Guardians facing each other with no alliances between them.:/ _Data filled the inner screen and she forced herself to not rock back from the sheer amount of raw input that accompanied its words. _/:Note the Warlock in the lead. I detect this one is a popular gladiator. Secondary on the kill list is a Hunter. These two have a rivalry. Note the score disparity. This matters to many attendees here, I expect. Remember, laconic. They cannot suspect you if you give them nothing to question.:/_

She grunted, low. A man in the colors of FWC glanced over to her at the sound and thrust his chin out in acknowledgment. She returned it with a terse nod. That seemed to satisfy him. Maybe this _would_ be easy.

. . .

"Yeah, but the Mischief Man's got a better handle on close range." The skinny, pale blue man in a thin robe shrugged. "When he decided he liked blades better than rifles, that was pretty much it for his opponents."

Beck crossed her arms and leaned back, showing she was unimpressed with the Hunter in second place and his chosen call-sign. Ghost had helpfully informed her some Guardians used them, especially for the games. This guy wasn't the familiar voice she was looking for, but he liked to roam the crowd. Letting him ramble was giving her a tour. She kept her voice pitched quiet, reading coached notes from the Ghost and doing her very best Vance-17. "One sniper. Dead blade."

"True," he drawled, unoffended by her difference in opinion. "But this guy, he likes to play the radar. And he knows his cover. Sniper's got to get him in the open first."

She grunted in response. They were coming up to a group of Dead Orbit techies, all clean coats and dark colors. They hailed her tour guide with raised glasses filled with some gleaming white liquid. "Snipers wait. Good ones wait long. One shot, all they need."

The guy laughed. "Not many Titans appreciate the slow approach, ma'am."

She froze for a second, wondering if she'd screwed up. He clapped a hand on her armored shoulder and just laughed again. She never even felt it – just a notice on the helm's screen. "Tactics."

"And there's all kinds. Hey, Joden. Sal. How's the trade?"

One of the techs looked drunk and dour. "I bet on the guy in last."

"Ah, Sal." Her guide clapped him on the shoulder next. "You can afford it."

"It was a lot of glimmer, Iain. I sponsored that twerp a new fusion. High end, too. Goddamn, at least _he's_ going to get something out of tonight."

Oh. That was the boring guy's name. She filed that away. None of these guys looked right, but she marked each face in turn anyway. Iain looked cheery. As he nattered, she found out he was sponsoring the Warlock in first. She was probably going to get a new ship out of tonight's melee, straight off the Orbit's books. Iain had his fingers in a lot of pies.

_/:Dead Orbit. Not as dour as the name suggests, but a bit standoffish. They think the answer to our problems lies in getting off-world, not in saving this one.:/_

"Think my guys might be in with them?" She pitched the question low in her throat.

_/:Can't know. Not enough input. They are not innately dangerous, Beck. Only hold a particular point of view. You will see this is true for all factions.:/_

"There's always outliers in any group," she whispered.

_/:Also true.:/_

She tilted her head slightly, barely polite as 'Iain' the tour guide gladhanded her around the group of techs. One of them looked at her with more incisiveness than she liked. "That is some nice start-up gear. Either you're keeping it clean or you are squeaky fresh."

She grunted instead of giving a real response.

"Some old Arcus stuff. You should let one of us hook you up with some new things." The tech squinted at her helm when she didn't say anything to that, trying to think fast. "I mean, it's gonna be great for you for a while. But a good sponsor and combat gets that much sweeter." He grinned at her over his glass.

_/:The factions like to sponsor any Guardian that will be courted by them. Buy them favor, and thus, a veneer of further legitimacy both in the City and with the rest of the Consensus factions.:/_

She took that in, slouching on the pillar by her would-be sponsor, ignoring him. It was what Vance would do, and it worked for her. He took his seat on the low couch again, looking hesitant about his silent dismissal. Maybe there really was some serious benefit to the Exo's attitude sometimes.

"So that's normal, factions screwing around for attention. Maybe I _am _here for nothing." She felt the thick, resistant fabric tighten around her throat as she talked to the Ghost.

_/:Perhaps, but your instincts say otherwise, and they've suited you well before. I am willing to see this through at your side a bit longer.:/_

"Won't Vance wonder where you are?"

_/:He does not patrol tonight.:/_

Unusually terse answer for the little thing. Okay. She shifted upright, allowing her borrowed armor to scrape a little to make a tone of distracted distance. The Orbit guy shifted over, glancing up at her, then towards another knot of partygoers with his eyes narrowed. She caught the look and glanced over, catching the flash of red and white on a tall man's arm.

"New Monarchy," muttered the tech. "Bunch of holier than thou up your ass crusaders, you ask me."

_/:Not the summary I was about to offer, but there is a taste of the correct gist there.:/ _Even in text, the Ghost's dry sense of humor came through.

She kept silent, the tech still muttering next to her. "Least that little bastard brought Troy with him tonight. Only one of that crew worth a shit."

_Troy. _She looked at the Monarchy group again, going cold all over.

_/:Reading uptick in heart-cycles. Verifying your targets. Troy Monast. That is Cordel Audrey with him, a minor factor in day to day business. Public fellow. Generally well known. Clean record.:/_

Data filled the screen again, the seven-point code of New Monarchy, a brief bio of their executor, Hideo. Beyond, she picked out the details around Cordel, watched him talk. Yes, this was her pair. Her heart thumped again, freshly nervous.

_/:Proceed carefully, Beck. Monarchy holds heavy sway already:/_

"Then what are these guys playing at?"

It didn't answer her.

. . .

She found an excuse to amble in that direction after the Dead Orbit guys started bickering between them over the nuances of warp drives. Wasn't alone doing it, either. Now and again other Guardians drifted close to listen to one of the New Monarchy reps holding forth on the bright future the City could have. Most drifted off again – many Guardians were more like Vance, she was cheered to see. They simply seemed to have little interest in the various rivalries. But she needed to stick around. The pair she recognized were in the back of the throng, only one or two Guardians with them. And no Ghosts.

Cordel glanced up when the lean figure of a Hunter waved off something he said, his eyes boring into the dim tint of the helm. He nodded a greeting, smile widening and waved her over while the one named Troy seemed to be discussing something hotly with someone half-shadowed. "Guardian! You've still got your Ghost with you. Wonderful, can I ask you to do me a solid and run a quick errand for me?"

_/:Oh, that's mildly sly.:/_

She shrugged.

"I got this guy over here," he slapped at Troy's arm. The man looked over to her at the contact, annoyed. "Thinks something stupid about some old pre-Collapse history. Sparta. Real old. Anyway, they got all sorts of notes on it down at the old Warlock stacks. I've got five thousand glimmer riding on it, and I'll cut you in for the service. Costs you nothing but a few minutes of your time."

"Tell Ghost."

She caught the strange name 'Leonidas' and the Ghost spun off. She tried to not immediately start worrying.

_/:I planned for something like this, and to our fortune, I have his requested information on hand already. I will not be far, Beck, and I can still hear you. Be calm, and use what you've already practiced.:/_

Troy watched the construct flit away and returned to his heated discussion. She couldn't hear much. _"__Church," _she thought she heard. _"__On a hill."_ Maybe. Well, apparently not wildly out of character for the Monarchy set. She decided the pair probably weren't that important. Vance had an example of their Crusader firearm line in the load-out room, underlining their motif and the tech guy's opinion. She'd never seen the weapon go out, though. She tilted her head towards the screen. "You favor?"

"Monarchy likes to bet on winners, Titan. Dead Orbit lavishes their gifts openly on that Warlock, but we'll be there for her a week, a month from now." Cordel smiled, eyes going half-lidded. "The future is there to be built, waiting for those strong enough, formidable enough to trust only in the Light."

"Big goals."

He laughed. "The salvation of the City and all mankind is the greatest of goals. We simply choose to ally with those that understand." The light smile took a fox's cunning. "Do you understand?"

"I understand standing firm when none else can." That sounded good in her head, thinking fast. "The last wall, when all others break."

_/:Oh, that's good. I'm stealing that for future use.:/_

Cordel looked openly pleased before he tipped himself in a slight bow, an elegant dip from the waist. "I think you have a place in that fine and fair future, Guardian. Come, let's talk."

. . .

The Ghost hovered soundlessly in an access port underneath the Tower hall, the creaking material of the floor giving it just enough range of scannable audio from the party. Sub-scans of the floor above put it right beneath the human ID'd as 'Troy' and its own monitors marked Beck close and safe. It checked her vitals, noting she was bearing this Cordel's diplomatic droning with patient annoyance. Perfect. It had missed some scraps of the conversation while moving into position, but now it dutifully eavesdropped; noting everything, forgetting nothing.

_"__Cordel's going to make his move. He thinks he's got enough. The top Warlock tonight's gonna roll with him. Bought and paid. That's the development he was waiting for."_

_"__Be better if he got the Hunter, too. Both popular. Warlocks got that talkative sway, yeah, but the Vanguard likes to buddy up with its own when shit goes down. Cayde-6 especially, and considering..."_

_"__He was courting Snapshot a little while ago. He's confident he's got enough. Besides. You know that score."_

_"__Cayde doesn't even want that damn job."_

_"__That's how Cordel's going to play it. Thinks he won't fight overmuch. Especially with that little detail pressuring him."_

_"__And who after? Who's Cordel going to skate in? I mean, that's the whole point, having someone he can control."_

_"__He didn't tell me. Wants to play it close, make the nominee look like a surprise. Organic, like. It'll keep the Speaker from getting too suspicious. Much less Hideo. Plausible deniability, that's his shtick." _The one called Troy sounded dour. The Ghost noted tone, heat traces, fidgeting, caloric burn. Troy was still uncertain about the whole deal. It compiled pressure points and filed them away.

"_Risky for him. What's Cordel getting out of this?"_

_"__You didn't figure that out?" _The tall human snorted, the sound echoing metallic through the floor. _"__He's a true believer. He wants our side to win."_

The other speaker was quiet for a long moment. _"__Is he actually listening to the reports? I mean, listening? Something's brewing. Guardians go out, sometimes don't come back. Always a risk, but it's happening a lot more often lately. I'm not sure there's going to be any winning this time, Troy. I'm not that faithful." _The figure stomped away, towards Beck and out of the Ghost's audio range. It too noted a single mangled word – _church_ – and the Ghost spun its points and contemplated a thousand possibilities in the space between microseconds.

. . .

/_:Let's go. We've both heard what we need, and I know our next step.:/_

Beck felt relief as the helm informed her the little figure was floating up behind her. She put her hand out, like other Guardians did, and watched it do its little dance above her outstretched palm. "Your report?"

Cordel looked expectant.

_"__Not Pliny, as you thought, sir. Herodotus. The arrows of the enemy were indeed claimed to blot out the sky, and in the face of that great foe, Leonidas fought on. Fought, and died. And, in his own way, claimed a kind of immortality for himself." _The Ghost hummed, gamboling lightly for its audience. _"__'Go and tell the Spartans, stranger passing by. That here, obedient to Spartan law, we lie.' I do not know if Simonides' monument has survived the Collapse. But the words have."_

Cordel tilted his head in seeming earnest gratitude. "A philosopher's spirit, your Ghost. I'll have your fee sent promptly."

She nodded curtly and turned to go.

_/:You have fine instincts, Beck:/ _The compliment scrolled on her screen.

"Thanks. Cordel is a slick politician. Makes me think of all the stuff my Da was angry about, but I can't prove anything wrong on my own. What did you discover?" Used to speaking aloud again, she scrambled to be sub-vocal at the last second, and found herself nearly stumbling at the Ghost's flat, bleak statement.

_/:Treason, indeed.:/_


	8. Gathering Storm

8. Gathering Storm

. . .

Cayde-6 spent some of his time during the joint debriefing of civilian, Guardian, and Ghost occasionally picking up the bright purple stress-ball he liked to keep on his desk, squeezing it in one agile metal hand until it uttered its squeaky, drawn-out _whonk! _of protest, and then putting it down again. He did this about five times before realizing that Ikora Rey was giving him that calm, even stare from her position at the witnesses side that meant she was going to melt his dirty little old-world artifact into a chemical paste if he didn't knock it off.

Then he kept squeezing it.

_Whooooooonk!_

Worth it. Just the expression on the regal Warlock, that subtle tightness between her brows, made it completely worth it.

. . .

Commander Zavala left the debriefing early on, no explanation offered. Neither remaining Vanguard seemed put out by this, so Beck continued to drain out everything she'd seen and heard that might have been possibly relevant. The more she talked, the more she found herself trying to worry that she was eating their time for nothing. But the Ghost hovered supportively between her and Vance-17, and that kept the worry balanced out. It believed in their task – and more pointedly, so did Vance.

It'd been Vance that hot-marched them straight to the Tower's sanctum the moment she'd gotten the borrowed suit of armor off. Didn't even listen to her explanation of how things had gone – probably didn't need to. She figured the Ghost had him updated before they were halfway down the hall from the party.

Her hands worked at each other, forever a little nervous with authority figures, trying to not flinch every time Cayde-6 honked the weird little toy of his. Finally, as she trailed off with the last things of actual importance she could think of, he sighed and put the ball down for what seemed to be the last time.

"This is totally my fault somehow, isn't it?" Cayde-6 slumped back into the soft-backed chair, crossing his arms behind his head while he looked up at the high ceiling.

Ikora Rey lifted a single, delicately formed eyebrow at him. Her tone was mild, just the barest bit wry. "If you were a little less public about how much you'd rather be afield again, it _might _help us avoid matters like this one."

"Agghhh." He fidgeted. "At this point, if I changed tactics, everyone'd know I'm full of crap and come at me that way. It's how it is. Hell, you know damn well next time it'll be some fringe freakball from Dead Orbit that thinks _you've _got something out for them. And then they'll press on you."

"It's true, Cayde." She looked rueful, but spared him a little smile. "And I know of you what they refuse to learn."

The light blue metal jaw and its flexible connections pulled into something like an earnest, self-deprecating grin. "I might be reluctant, but I'm responsible to my very end. This wasn't a gamble they were gonna win anyway. Probably."

"Has this happened before?" The girl seemed hesitant about asking her question.

"Ehhh. It's politics. Everyone thinks they know best, you know? Get 'em safe long enough and people tend to stop thinking about survival and about getting their own folks ahead instead. It's, like, one of the basic recipe steps for social norms and community construction." Cayde-6 noted the sour milk expression on the young human's face. "On the bright side, it's not so much that these guys you're telling me about are moustache-twirlin' villains out of a holovid. Ghost there underlines it – the ringleader's a true believer. Honest to God thinks getting me out of the way is probably the best thing for everyone. At least the jackass has got the courage of his convictions."

It didn't help the kid's expression. Man, idealists. He didn't run into many anymore. It was kinda neat. Cayde-6 picked up a data-tablet and checked a notice on it.

"Well, if it makes you feel better, Zavala's already got Cordel Audrey braced downstairs. What he took off for, in case you were wondering. Audrey'll give up the goods about most of his play – Zavala's got a fine style for that sort of thing - and then we'll take him off the board politically. Don't worry about the details on that, kiddo. Super top secret backroom dealings, by which I mean boring as hell. And our problems with New Monarchy will go away for quite some time. They know how the game works, and Hideo likes his comfy chair. He'll play. Anyway. Bad news, your Monast seems to have scooted." He put down the tablet and tugged aimlessly at his hood. "Well, he sounds like he was already iffy about the plan. Maybe he's splitting the team."

_"__He sounds like he was more invested in the practical side of matters. He might be working on that phase." _Vance's Ghost twirled slightly.

"Yeah, possibly. This pressure point deal you were describing. You didn't get any certain info on that?"

The Ghost shared a look with Beck, its lone blue eye fading in and out as it assessed and re-assessed its data. _"__Vapors and nuances. They certainly seemed to be invested in something important by their tone, but not sure what."_

Beck thought over all the pointless ramblings she'd overheard, remembered something Troy had said. "It's probably nothing..." she started with, hesitant as the Exo Hunter dropped his upturned face to gaze straight at her.

"I like instincts, kid. They're kind of my thing. Spill it."

"Troy said something about a church." Blank looks from both Vanguards. "And maybe something about a hill?"

Something undefinable changed in the room's atmosphere. Vance, silent throughout the debriefing since the introductions, shifted under the weight of it.

The Ghost flitted forward a little. _"__I can verify I heard the word 'church' as well."_

Cayde-6's hand came down over his face, rubbing at his metal jaw. He shared a look with Ikora.

"I thought it was nothing," said Beck.

"Wish it were." Cayde-6 cleared his throat, using the pointless sound to indicate his spreading discomfort. "Kid, I hate how rude this is going to sound, but I need to ask you to leave. Important stuff is following."

"She stays."

Cayde tilted his head at Vance like a dog that had been shown a card trick. "Guardian, I don't take orders."

Beck looked startled. "I can-"

Vance cut everyone off, his tone milder. "Let me rephrase. Girl got us to this moment. Has some right to know what she earned for you. Seems important. Tell her a little, or she might bug _me _for a month until I slip and spill it." He grunted. "Better trapjaw than I got. She won't talk."

Ikora Rey glanced down at Beck, fixing the young woman's eyes with her own. "Is that true?"

"I promise. I won't tell anyone what I hear."

The Warlock shared another short glance with Cayde-6 and then looked evenly into each visiting face in turn. "Your pair of dubious friends didn't say anything about a church." She paused, slight tension in her posture. "They said _Churchill."_

. . .

Ikora let that sink in, watching the Ghost spin out to reform itself, gamboling in the air. It knew the import of what she said, showed it the way it knew best.

"Churchill was one of the Warminds," explained Cayde. "Well, he was some other interesting fella once, too, why I think some of them got their names the way they did. A big shot in another great war for the future of the world, long, long time ago. Anyway, like all of them Warminds did, Churchill died in his little fortified, hidden hole under some old London countryside as fire fell from the sky. As far as anyone knows, I guess. Figure the human version of him woulda liked that just fine; he was a combative kinda guy. And that is the end of that sad story. Except..." He made that soft little harrumphing noise again.

Vance-17 watched the Vanguard shift in his seat. "You found the body."

"I did, Guardian. Off on a patrol, chasing some Archon that stole himself a piece of abandoned heaven out there that I didn't think he had any right to. And when I found it, I buried it back down as best I could and left it."

_"__Warmind salvage might be key to the reconstruction of pre-Collapse technology." _Vance's Ghost was chiding. _"__You left that behind?"_

"I did. And that's where the public half of the story lies." Cayde looked at Beck again, the aqua-blue glowing eyes lidding gently. "That's what you found for me, kiddo. Dead men and dead tales. Figure somehow New Monarchy found out about my call and my buried treasure and thought they were gonna push me on it. The 'He's not thinking of the City!' angle. Because they weren't there, and they don't know. I made a rough choice. And I'll stand by it."

Beck got up. "Thank you for your trust." She looked squarely at Vance. "I definitely think this is all I want to know. I've got a lot to think about."

"Hear that, girl." Vance gave her a short nod. "You did good."

Cayde-6 watched the pair, gruff and careful both. The compliment clearly surprised her. He caught the soft blue gaze of the little Ghost, looking at him as he looked at them. Much as he trusted and appreciated his own, sometimes he had to wonder what the hell was going on in their little brains. Oftentimes.

Then the girl – Beck, he reminded himself – politely excused herself with a bow and now the Exo was looking at the Vanguard again. In the background, Ikora led Beck out of the office with a glance over her shoulder. Time for more business. He grinned at the blued-steel figure in front of him through hooded eyes and a gleaming jaw. "So, Guardian. You up to taking what's gonna amount to be a really dirty job from someone that ain't your appointed handler?"


	9. Fritzed

9. Fritzed

. .

Vance-17 leaned over the console of the Kestrel, watching the scans of the stilled European landscape and waiting for the Ghost to tell him what he already figured on.

_"__Cayde's coordinates check out. Should be three large camps of Fallen, House of Kings. We should be able to avoid two of them, the third may possibly engage. Edge of our projected range."_

Vance grunted by way of agreeing with its assessment. "And the other two locations he gave?" One was the trailhead for what both he and Cayde figured would be the best location for a salvage op to hunker in, the other was Cayde's last coded checkpoint for Churchill's 'tomb.'

_"__One, intermittent readings, might be something scrambled."_ As the Vanguard and Guardian had suspected was a possibility, going over the details for the operation several days prior. Salvage operators worked on stealth almost exclusively. They couldn't face the threats out there, not without a Guardian's power or full backing from a Consensus faction. And something like this wasn't going to get official Monarchy sanction. They would have to ride low. _"__The other, only silence. A cold spot in the world."_

The Titan slumped comfortably to one side, feeling the weight of the experimental ELF waveslider on his hip – the entire reason he didn't fly out an hour after getting his orders from the Hunter. The kid wasn't confident in her own work yet, but the Ghost claimed she had something viable. Kid had burned long hours finalizing the circuitry on the paired prototypes; taking time away from that day job she had with the door-opening words 'Vanguard business.' Vance knew through the Ghost that she was going to need to test the damned thing before hooking up her little home colony, and what better way than now?

. . .

Datastream recollection: Vance's thoughts danced through the humanlike but _fast _processes of visual/audio recompilation.

_"__Take your time. We can delay Cordel a good while and, if we're right, that'll slow Troy. If he's out there, waiting for a go order on that proof they need to shove me like I think he might be. Now, I told the kid true – strictly politically, this would blow over like any old, ill wind. But this extra little detail? Whatever they got on my old call, that just might and maybe bring a fight. That's a destabilization on the home front. Cordel's plan could end up winning. We cannot afford any chance of that right now, Guardian." _Cayde's firm voice in his mind, clear as if he were in the Kestrel with him now. _"__You need as much prep as you can muster – you're going out alone and without backup. We'll put you up like an ordinary little patrol, same as any other day, but once you cross the water and enter that old UK airspace, you're off the grid with just my best wishes and a private bar bet on your back."_

He'd taken that in with his customary silence, then broke it. _"__Might have an option. Backup plan. Let you know if the op sours."_

_"__If you've got any advantage in your toolbox, use it. I want to see you come back alive, Guardian. I'll be owing you a debt for cleaning my mess for me, and I do like to pay up. Honorable, like."_

The memory rolled on through the processor fire of neuro-feeds and cortex-synapse sparks; inputs, numbers, strategic simulations. The Kestrel held a dozen ammo packs, several extra load-outs, and a soldering kit in case the ELF barfed or got smacked. He hoped it wouldn't; outside of combat, Vance wasn't made for much else. Maybe the Ghost would be able to co-op the stuff in a pinch; it had a gift for anything with an electronic brain.

. . .

His thoughts were disrupted by a twinge of tension in the Ghost's metallic, humming voice. _"__Anomalies in the camp readings, Guardian."_

"Explain."

_"__Two seem... abandoned. No signs of organic life. We're not yet in range for me to attempt a visual. Unsure of the third. The other remains scrambled. I find myself concerned."_

_"__I don't really know what you're going to find this time, Guardian. Been a long time since that day." _Cayde's voice again, whispering behind the Ghost's unusually reserved one. _"__Hard for me to warn you. All I got is... Sometimes dead things should stay dead."_

Vance shook his head, irritated. "Set a course for slow approach to one of the Fallen camps. We'll take a look ourselves." He glanced back towards the Kestrel's hold. "I'm gonna prep the heavies."

. . .

The 85lb machine gun rode remarkably heavy on most organics, but went almost unnoticeable on Titans, much less Exos. Vance regarded the load as nothing less than what he was made for. The manufacturer's bright paint flash was long-since gone; one of the first things he did when prepping his gear for field work. The belt-fed ammo pack hanging next to the ELF was another fifty odd pounds, with some spare compacted clips danging on his other belt side to balance him out as he marched up terrain to the first Fallen camp. Least he now knew for sure the waveslider worked. He'd sent out a single series of pings on landing the Kestrel. After a lag of some thirty-odd seconds, he heard Beck's quiet voice coming in through the helm's jerry-rigged connection. _"__Received. Good luck, Vance."_ He planned to check in on regular intervals, the girl staying close to the waveslider's partner.

Now the silence matched his march, step for step. There was a low wind coming down the rolling hills, pushing fast against the swarming grey clouds above. Three hours to actual nightfall behind the skycover. One, maybe two till functionally the same result. He had some precise low-level vision implants as his basic cyber build, and more than enough read-out in his plain but exceptionally well-made helm to make up for the darkness. Still, old primal instincts, some dredge from all the humanlike subroutines, made it easy to be wary of the night. Wary of the silence in it.

Without flesh, he couldn't feel that prickle at the base of his neck as the edge of the Fallen camp came into view. It came as a low hum in the back of his mind instead, that instinctive warning of _something is very wrong here, but I haven't put the picture together yet._

No dropship trace – cool air, no spark of ozone, the heady metal smell of something else in the air. Ether and dust and something that wasn't human blood. No fires. No warmth left. Splatter on the rocks, something in the darkness – and the helm helpfully outlined the pieces for him.

_"__They all died. All of them. Scattered and dismembered."_

"Another Guardian?" He muttered the question into the helm. "Hive?"

_"__This is rare viciousness. Explo- alert!"_

Vance dropped into a protective crouch and scuttled quick for cover as the sonorous hum of a Servitor filled the approaching dusk. The helm screamed a silent alarm at him, the visual red darts letting him know its vector of approach and telling him in unmistakeable data that the Servitor knew of his presence and was coming to investigate.

Vance muttered a curse under his breath and unhooked the machine gun. It was going to make a hell of a noise all through the surrounding hills, but if the Ghost was right, not much was listening in. He cocked the weapon into readiness, popped out of cover and then dove right back in when the Servitor did something he had never before encountered.

It began to scream. A high, metallic, spiraling shriek with all its external ridges splayed. He peeked cautiously around the edge of the rock he was behind and watched it as it chose not to attack. It hovered instead, beginning to spin in place – first slowly, then speeding up at regular intervals until it was a dervish of purple and red inside its shield, so quick that his optics were claiming to pick up traces of doppler shift. And still the scream, intense and wild amidst the dead of the camp – the realization piecing together complete with the Ghost's unfinished statement. The Servitor had killed the entire party; exploded the Fallen soldiers into pieces. Probably seconds before they could realize something was wrong with their loyal machine.

"Ghost." His voice was a tense question. The answer was a long time coming, and when it did, it was the obvious one, all but whispered in a voice so dully metallic that it meant a kind of fear had taken hold in the construct.

_"__It's insane."_

He took that in with a curt nod, came to a few more conclusions of his own. He stepped out and pumped a third of the machine gun's clip into the center of the Fallen Servitor's eye, then ducked again as it exploded. The alien construct's remains smashed against his shielding rock and down through the hills at a velocity that punched pieces of it deep into the environment. "Came out to be killed. Why it didn't attack."

_"__I was unable to parse its communication, however... I think that might well be correct."_

Vance grunted, unwilling to put any more of himself in the sound. He pulled out the half-used clip, replaced it with a fresh instead of looking at his Ghost while he talked. "Think the other camp's got a nut bot, too?"

_"__I truly don't know."_

"Guess we go look."

. . .

There _was_ another Servitor in the second camp several clicks north. That hum kept going; same low murmur inside his skullplates, telling him to be careful. This one didn't look up as they approached the ruins of the burnt-out camp. It was busy grinding its front plates into an unforgiving rock-face, making a soft, keening teakettle noise that clashed and fought with the duller scraping sounds. There had been a dead vandal on that rock when it started. Pieces of it were smeared smooth under the pressure of the Fallen's loyal assistant, while a broken arm was scorched black on the ground underneath. The Servitor died without any struggle or complaint. It stilled at the first shot, turned to take the rest full in its 'face.' It dropped into dead, hot scrap, the keening noise fading away. An organic might have taken the drifting sound as something like gratitude.

Vance toed the remains, chin jutting. "Scan this one out for me. I want to know why they're freaking out. Killing their own crew."

_"__You know why." _It came in a grudging mutter, hovering down to begin its work.

He felt irrational irritation with the construct. "No, I don't. I got a supposition, Ghost, fed by Cayde's story."

_"__Dead things should st-"_

"And we're here to make sure they do!" He couldn't stop himself from snapping at it. Machines were supposed to be reliable. They did their job; no more, no less. Didn't have to like it. Emotions weren't the primary. Getting it done was the primary. That was what they were made for. What he himself was made for. If they couldn't do that, what damn good were they?

_"__There's gonna be whispers in that tomb, Guardian. Try not to listen." _More of Cayde's vague warnings in the back of his thoughts. Well, now the whispers were screaming through the local mechanicals. Two Servos, gone section 8, no better than a Frame with a burnt chipset. He began to wonder if the supposed salvage camp had brought an Exo with them, and if so, what shape _they_ might be in. What that was going to mean for him.

Vance snarled again, pissed off at nothing and everything before forcing himself back into his stoic face. He pinged the waveslider with the A-OK codephrase, letting the girl know everything was thus far all right. His Ghost spun at the sound, its one lone eye telling him it knew he was lying.


	10. Tracks

10. Tracks

. . .

Vance hunkered over the mess of human-sized tracks, piecing the story together. There'd been one hell of a ruckus in the carefully concealed scrapper campsite, but not like the others. One patch of blood, no body, signs of a struggle between two people. The wounded victim ran from the struggle, somewhere up through the brush on the hillside with a few dried out droplets of blood leaving trail. Vance figured the body was going to be up there. With no shame, he decided he wasn't in that much of a hurry to go look until he had to.

The Ghost hovered behind him, quiet since its assessment that _something _external had definitely overridden the Servitor's mechanical brain, setting it against its own people. The rest was lost in noise and fried circuity. It didn't offer an answer to Vance's unasked question, though he knew the Ghost saw it plain. The tracks he was looking at indicated a medium-sized operation, half a dozen people. The smaller the group, the quicker they could move. Fast strike salvage ops frequently operated in pairs, using a specialized cargo hauler that was transmat-capable if they could afford it – and if they couldn't at the outset, it was the first thing a successful team budgeted for. If they brought a third, it meant they needed a lookout in bad territory.

Six unique sets of tracks he could identify... they thought they had a serious score. Big doings. He knew for certain now what they were here for. Vance looked at the deepest footprints, the ones that circled the camp and its nearby natural cave in a steady pace at first, then led to the struggle, and finally the melee in the center. Yeah, those were Exo tracks, their metal bodies running on average heavier than most organics. He treated the realization like bare data, didn't spend any more thought on it. The rest of the camp got wind of something gone flaky fast – the ground told him at least one person bolted probably as soon as the struggle broke out. That might be a survivor. Maybe. His calculations suggested this one bolted for the old RAF aerodrome down in the valley... and the Warmind tomb nestled within it.

Two sets went towards the nearby cave in a tangle that spoke of a desperate charge – the cave being a good shelter-in-place option for flybys or bad weather. The heavy trail in, then out again. He felt sure there was gonna be a hell of a mess inside there, too. He grunted, soft as he could.

The last set seemed to try and follow the first to bolt. Lifting his head, he could see that one wavered off, deeper into the hills. Bad choice, that led towards the last Fallen camp. The one most distant, seemed still operational. They hadn't engaged. Once he'd seen a red line cut through the nighttime fog; a vandal on far away sniper duty.

And the unknown Exo, whose mind may have snapped just like the Servitors. The trail for him wobbled back and forth for a while before steadying. After cleaning up the three at the camp and cave, he'd gone after the two that fled. Well, there was gonna be a fifty-fifty. Did the survivors have enough wits to drop their pursuer, or was he gonna find more ripped up bodies down the trail?

He sighed and pulled himself upright, squinting up the hill. Well, he'd seen what he could from the camp. Time to check the corpses, see if any of them were Troy Monast. His gut instincts said they wouldn't be – the kid described a cagey sort of guy in both her encounters, the one with more common sense than the slick talker the Vanguard was still sitting on. Good odds he was the one that bolted when the fight broke out. He shifted the machine gun on his back and went up.

. . .

The Ghost had to run a DNA check against the City database info. None of the three pulped piles were Troy. The Ghost scouted the fourth one down the side trail itself, staying low in the yellow grass in the wake of the fleeing trail. He noted clinically to its Guardian that the body of that one was not only not their boy, but intact... save for the quarter-sized, seared holes in the forehead and back of the skull that said the vandal sniper wasn't letting anything close to their camp.

So that was comforting.

With a glance up at the veiled, hazy moon, he went down the trail towards the aerodrome. He still wasn't thinking about what probably had happened to the other Exo. What might be down there. He kept right on not thinking about it until both his helm and his Ghost told him he was about to trip on the poor bastard.

. . .

_"__Well." _The Ghost hovered over the tableau, still half a kilometer away from the edge of the bombed-out RAF outpost. Rusted sheds were already in view on the horizon. _"__That's unpleasant."_

Vance-17 said nothing. There wasn't anything he could say, no point to breaking the silence on his end. His thoughts clicked on, touched with unease and a morose kind of gratitude. Were he organic, he might have felt nausea. Nothing with any spirit should go out that way.

The scrapper Exo was slumped with his back against a jutting pillar of stone, some outlying bunker remnant that had remained standing in its place among the low hills that surrounded the west end of the zone. His blank, unlit face was turned up to the sky, half the steel jaw torn free from its synthetic ligaments. One eye was pulled out of joint. Fluids were still pooled underneath him; tacky and slick combining into a mess of lost oils. He stank like a burnt junkyard. No coming back from that; no reboot or recompilation for this one.

Scraped and shattered fingers, thick plated and meant for brute labor, still dangled from the peeling metal mess he'd made of his own throat. Torn it open, tearing at the vital connections and severing everything he could before jamming in a small charge usually used for loosening up dense scrap piles. The scorch marks went visibly down into the torso. Would be just enough to blow out everything upstairs, too. Just enough electromagnetism close to the cortex. He'd bought a one way ticket.

But before he'd done all that, he'd left his last testament on the stone, scrawled there by a piece of metal he'd torn out of himself. The words were in slashes and pulled scars; hieroglyphs of desperation.

_GET IT OUT OF ME_

_OUT im so sorry_

_helpgetitoutoutou u_

_"__Guardian." _The Ghost hovered between him and the broken figure, breaking his assessing stare. Its voice was tactful. "_Picking up life signs. A few hundred meters away."_

He glanced up into its eye. "Getting close."

_"__To the tomb. Yes. In fact, I think the signals come from near its entrance."_

There was the faintest of scraping sounds as Vance ground his jaw. "Fine."

_"__Are you all right?"_

"Always." He unsnapped the machine gun and strode on.

. . .

The helm was confirming Ghost's warning, throwing up tracking information based on motion and heat. The figure ahead was scurrying between several of the bunkers just past the front gate. Vance had to make a choice – make a little noise and draw the figure out, or skulk up and possibly scare the crap out of them. Scared organics were unpredictable. Flaky. Not the optimal choice. He let his footsteps thunk just a little heavier than usual. It took a few moments, but the figure froze behind a scorched office. And then it bolted towards the guardian.

Vance-17 tightened his finger on the trigger just in case, smirked inside his helmet when the tall figure came into view. He was pale under the dirt, bundled in a long brown coat with no identifying marks. Not unusual for a scrapper. Or a faction brat trying to be clever.

"Oh thank _God, _thank _Light, _shit, thank everybody." Troy Monast sagged against the edge of the building and tossed him a jaunty, if weary salute. "Look, man, I'm just a salvager. We flew in a couple days ago, saw some possible goodies on the scans. I know we're out of bounds, I'm really sorry. I lost all my _crew._" Vance said nothing to Troy's genuine wail. At least he wasn't a heartless scrap of flesh. "Some of them were good friends. You on patrol, sir?"

Vance still said nothing. Let the guy spin out his story all he likes.

"You gotta be. Did you pick up our distress signal? Mikkel said he was going to try to fire it off, if he could get away from Baldwin-49." A green shadow passed across Troy's face, hinting at the story there. "Did you see Baldwin? Our Exo?"

Vance spoke, willing to use a single word to push the guy into talking more. "Dead."

Troy swore. "Goddamn. At least Mikkel's plan worked, and you look okay. God, I hope it's okay. I need to get out of here. Can you help me?" The face opened up to him, earnest. "I got a big deal here. If I can get some of it out tonight, it'll be great for the City. You won't believe the stuff around here. Golden Age stuff. I guarantee it'll be a benefit. To you, too, Guardian."

Vance shrugged. "I don't leave civs behind." Troy _was _a little cagey, but not a gifted talker. He spoke too much, would give up everything if prompted. He figured it was worth an easy push. "Hell happened out here? Mess at your camp."

The green shadow came back. "Man, I don't know if you want to hear it."

"Tell me."

Troy passed a hand over his face. "Come on. Let's get into one of these outer bunkers. I'll lay it out for you." He flickered his gaze towards the hills past the Titan. "That other camp of Fallen like to patrol around the fringes. They don't get close. And they shoot fast. Like they're pissy about letting anyone close."

Vance tilted his faceplate towards his Ghost, who whispered their shared thought through his helm.

_"__Or letting anything out."_


	11. The Mummy's Curse

11. The Mummy's Curse

. . .

Troy led him into one of the bigger bunkers, a reinforced and mostly intact empty ammo dump that dug into one of the hillsides. A lot of the bunkers did that, using nature for protective cover. The Ghost zoomed off for a few moments to map them, ensuring that the entrance to the tomb was where they'd projected. The New Monarchy brat didn't seem to notice, scrabbling around the wreckage of electronics and piles of metal. "Wanted to pull together what I could, make an ad hoc radio if I didn't think Mikkel's signal got out. I mean, I should anyway." He glanced up, that wild light of fear flickering into his eyes afresh. "Never know what's going to happen next." A little chuckle. It came out jangly and too nervous.

Vance crossed his arms, used a rusted strut to support him. There was that low hum in the air. All along, he'd thought it was a reaction of his instincts. But as they moved deeper into the aerodrome's territory, the hum got louder. He had a pretty good suspicion where it was going to start to get the loudest. He shoved the sound out of his thoughts and grunted at Troy.

"Look, you saw the camp. All you guys do basic tracking, and you got your Ghosts... There's not much to tell." The human scratched at his face, not aware he was doing it. He fidgeted as the silence grew. "Okay, look. We got here three days ago, after we got the intel on the score from an associate."

Could have stopped him right there – what associate was going to sell out a potential big score to anyone else without making sure they'd secured themselves in for a cut of the profits? Not standard salvage protocol. Vance-17 let it go.

"Everything was fine, you know? We set our base camp, got used to those Fallen patrols... nobody was bugging us. Early day before yesterday, we go in. There's another run of bunkers under these, entrance not far from here." He cleared his throat. "Some top secret junk. Thought there might be good Golden Age stuff in there, based on how untouched the area is. We saw some burn marks, looked like there'd been some sort of fight years, and I mean _years_, after the London cookout. But that was all, right? So we peeked in to get the lay of it, and man, I don't know what we're looking at. Really techy stuff. We should have brought a specialist scrapper with us, but we didn't think that far. Just an easy grab and go."

They_ had_ brought a tech. He was the pulped mess up on the hill. DNA verified him as a top notch black market supplier with a gift for Golden Age scrap. This guy. Vance didn't budge, smirking a little inside his helm. In his experience, the crappiest liars threw in all sorts of extra details, tried too hard to make sure people believed them. Too clear they didn't believe themselves. Troy was getting crappier by the minute. Maybe it was the stress. The guy was getting kind of white at the corners of his eyes.

"But we did have the Exo. Baldwin. Heavy hauler, runs – ran - through the shipyards when we're not pulling him out for a job. He got real quiet when he got inside. Never said much. Just asked me once, "_You hear that?_" Had no idea what he was talking about." The green tint came back. "Till he screamed about the humming later that night, after the rest of the crap went down. Then I kinda figured."

"What crap?" Something cold trickled through his neuroconducters. He ignored it. _You hear that?_

"The Fallen." He sighed. "We had to bug out quick. Their patrols came down. Figured we were gonna lose everything we found. We got up on the hillside overlooking-" he gestured northwest. "Watched them bring in a squad from their other camp. Must have gotten a lot of interest, they pulled both their Servitors in with them. They did a lot of hooting, didn't go into the underground complex real far, and then they pulled out. Who knows what they thought? Third camp stayed way back through all this. Scared shitless they were going to spot us."

"And later?"

It was Troy's turn to stay quiet for a long time. "Man..." He looked away. "Everything went nuts after dark. Just... metal screaming. Baldwin started pacing after dinner, cold food cuz we weren't risking fires. Not with them so close. He just... paced. Until he went after Francis. Just... just went at him. Pounded him in the face. Broke his nose like instantly..." His voice trailed off for a moment, fidgeting again. "You guys are so damn strong. And he just... Francis ran. I ran, too, while Mikkel was screaming about how he was going to get help. And except for all the screaming... that's really all I know. I came down here, I've been here since it all went down, hoping someone would come. God, this job turned into a mess. I knew it would."

Troy sat on a pile of scrap and looked up at Vance, the energy draining visibly out of a hangdog face. He put a hand out, questioningly. "You don't hear it, do you? That hum?"

_You hear that?_

The persistent low hum behind the human's words. The fleeting image of the Exo that had torn out his own throat and burned out his metal soul. He ignored both, best he could. They fought him. That goddamn _hum_.

Vance plucked a plasteel binding from the emergency repair kit and grabbed the man's wrist, pulling it towards the strut. Troy was too stunned to react at first, only starting to pull away when he finally realized what Vance was doing. The binding looped around the thinner wrist easily, then clicked into place around the strut. He yanked another out of the kit at his side, reached for Troy's other wrist. "Give it up. I don't want to break you. Like you said, it's kinda easy."

Troy fought him anyway, fruitlessly. When he was done, the Exo looked down at his handiwork. One traitorous, restrained human. He'd have to make a decision later; whether it would be safe for the Vanguard to take him as a prisoner or what. But later. He was starting to get a headache.

"You _can't _do this to me," came the frightened, angry snarl. "You're supposed to help!"

"Can. Did. Should be safe enough for you. For a while. Nothing else alive around here."

"The Fallen-"

"Won't come down here again. Last camp saw what happened to the other two, just like you said." He rubbed the butt of his palm between his eyes, pointless exercise. Did nothing for the slowly increasing thrum in his neurocircuitry. "They're gonna shoot us, we try to leave. Got a sniper out." He dropped his hand and stared down at the human with his gold eyes. "Worry about that later. Sit tight."

"W- don't leave me here!"

He did.

. . .

_You hear that? _The question echoed in his mind as he checked the local background radiation and other usual hazards as he approached the tomb's peeled-open entryway. He didn't know what Baldwin's voice modulation had been set at. No idea of the poor bastard's personality. The voice in his head was his own, he knew. Filling in the gaps. Until his Ghost answered the question for him, making him realize he'd said it aloud.

_"__I am detecting a low emission, almost lost in natural wave patterns. Not from your ELF. Different tonal frequency, not one I'm familiar with."_

He grunted.

_"__I assume you're hearing the hum that's been referred to." _It kept its voice neutral, seemingly calculating something to itself.

Vance glanced at it, shrugging once. No point in lying to it. "Since we started approaching the first camp."

_"__I see." _Still neutral. _"I theorize the hum is coming from Churchill's tomb, obviously. I think it may be likely that it increased its area of effect when these people breached the entryway. In retrospect, unwise."_

"Cayde said it was dead."

_"__I see no reason to doubt him."_

"So what's the deal? Something change since he was here? Why's mech stuff around here going full FUBAR?"

It didn't have an answer. Instead it hovered aloft, near the torn portal. _"I am with you, Guardian. Your mission will not fail. I'll be at your side through it."_

He sighed, low and heavy, feeling it thrum through his chest and against his rattling steel skull. Knowing the damn thing was answering his hidden question for him - _"Is their madness going to affect me?"_

_"__Vance?"_

That got the Ghost a look. It didn't use his name much. Knew he liked things professional. Distanced. "I'm fine."

_"__Of course," _it said, and its voice was warm enough to almost sound organic.

. . .

There was darkness inside the breach. Darkness, and a rich, sonorous depth adding itself to the omnipresent hum; filling the steel walls, rumbling through the pipes, rippling across the floor towards him. Now there were whispers in it, too, murmurs in a thousand voices still too distant, too snarled for him to make out. As he kept walking into the dusty blackness that filled the Warmind tomb, it seemed like sometimes the sound would roll away from him, like the tide, before rushing close once more. He could hear the ticks of his internal servomotors in those brief, blessed silences. The rush of oils, the process of energy. And then the hum would come back and filled his head with the throbbing press of its immediacy.

Once he thought he heard sobbing. At a t-junction, still barely beyond the entry lobby, he froze with his weapon at the ready as a single clear sentence in a child's tinny, terrified voice filled the air.

_O mommy make it stooop!_

The Ghost expanded itself into the vulnerable but Light-filled orb, all its nodes and triangles spinning aloft, filling the space around them and chasing the darkness away as best it could. _"I think I see."_

He kept his weapon ready.

_"__The brain is long dead. The body yet convulses."_

It spun forward a little, cautiously, spilling its light down the long hallway that led deeper to the cortex levels of the facility. _"All of this facility is that body. Its roots go into the earth all around us. It's been writhing out here for so long with no one to hear it. In pain, Vance. And alone in the Darkness."_

"Unlife?"

_"__Forcing itself into something like a mimickry of life, yes. Maybe it only learned to start crying out when Cayde was here. Maybe he didn't come close enough." _It reformed itself, still brighter than normal, a single point of light in the crying dark.

_"__I don't really know what you're going to find this time, Guardian..." _Cayde's voice filtering in against the whispers. The Hunter's voice had been briefly hesitant, a glimmer of seriousness fighting against his cheery nature. _"...Sometimes dead things should stay dead." _Again, he felt that gratitude for not being organic – for never knowing what bile or acid might taste like on the back of the tongue. "Forcing itself into things. Like us."

_"__We need to end it... put this poor thing down the rest of the way. Before it infects others. Before it truly learns again how to scream."_

"And you don't hear that?" He gestured down the hall. The soft sobbing was back.

_"__Not like you do."_

"What the hell are you?" A spark of some emotion found its way into his voice and he ended his sentence with a snarl that hid his discomfort.

_"__Your friend." _Soft and unoffended. _"Come. We've our mission."_

The mission. He could fixate on that. A bubbling scream filled the air and he swiveled his head around sharply to smash it against the junction's corner. Sparks jolted behind his eyes as his skullplates dented from the force of the impact.

_(SIGINT 4-0-9, we read you loud and clear. We'll hold at Baigong, we'll hold. Damn you, we've got the line.)_

Echoes of his own voice filtered in, drowning out the tomb's corruptive wails. He took that with grim satisfaction. There was something that would work. Buy him time while Churchill's dead signals battered against him. "Damn right. The mission. Let's get to it."


	12. Things We Lost in the Fire

12. Things We Lost in the Fire

. . .

Beck tried to doze next to the strewn-out but functioning guts of her waveslider. She'd only had time to rig up one into its portable case, but at least both worked and had _stayed _working. Vance-17 pinged a contact every ninety minutes sharp, though the lag was still a few seconds in between transmissions. The Vance-ness of that gave her a little smile every time. Even when the Exo communicated, he tried to not communicate. Too bad she couldn't have miniaturized the ELF and stuck it on the Ghost somehow instead. At least it would have probably made small talk while checking in.

Meanwhile, she wanted to dig in there, see if she could fix the lagging connection, but didn't dare risk the chance of mucking the communicator up entirely without the Ghost there to spot for her. She'd spent most of the day reading. Now, with the hours drawn late enough to crawl, she found herself unable to sleep.

The device abruptly pinged, startling her into wide-eyed alertness. Twenty-three minutes early. She scrambled upright on her seat in the load-out room, hand darting out to communicate back before it crackled alive again, Vance's words half-lost in static.

_"__Going deep, kid. Will lose contact. Ping again when we're back up."_

She furrowed her brow at the waveslider. Too much static, but he sounded tired. She pressed the comm button. "I'll be here. You okay?"

_"__I'm fine," _came the response after a particularly long lag in transmission. After another, the connection drifting enough to make him sound tired - _"Get some rest."_

A flutter ran down her spine. He was definitely not okay.

. . .

Vance staggered once as the pressure against his mind became almost physical. They were now deep in the complex, working slowly on mapping out the borders of the facility. The Ghost claimed it would be able to identify the structural weak points once they had the shape of the place, at which point they could back track and prepare a controlled demolition of the place. That would mean getting back outside and pulling together supplies from the RAF ruin, but it also meant a chance for open air and quiet skies. First, though, they were going to have to go all the way down to the central core, where the dead cortex rested. Make damn sure it _was _dead, then rip up its access to the physical structure. It was going to be a mess.

Meanwhile, there was something else constantly on the edges of his vision down the hall. Some wavering, fleeting figure with a broken gleam for a face. A ghost of Churchill itself, a desperate echo looking for someone to listen to it. It would be pitiful, if it wasn't for its insistence on trying to crawl close to him, access him to scoop out his insides and get into him instead. Smashing his skull into the walls and pipes now and then as they scouted helped chase it away for a little bit. It kept coming back more quickly each time, slithering close and trying to whisper to him about dead things. He had no interest in what it wanted to say, but it was getting harder to process thoughts quickly. His synapses were rerouting constantly, too much damage in active nodes.

He was going to have to reboot. That would buy him time. With the Ghost watching over him, restarting him, it should work fine. Even in the hole. Just like any other day in the field where a stunt tactic didn't go quite the way he'd hoped. Hell, the thanatonauts did it all the time, crazy bastards. He'd watched one mutter to himself for about three hours one day in the port while waiting for Holliday to finish tweaking his ship's engine. It was kinda entertaining. The Ghost had found it more fascinating, though it didn't bother him much with its own conclusions on the guy's rambling. Now the construct broke into his thoughts.

_"__We've got a blockage in the way coming up. My readings suggest we can detour around it through a connecting pipeline, but there's some electrical activity inside. We'll need to be careful."_

"Can you shut it off?" There it was again, massive now, hulking, all haze and import. Yeah, he understood about detours. His mind jangled.

_"__Not from here." _The blue gleam finished scanning a mangled fuse box before turning to regard its Guardian. Vance wasn't looking at it. He was staring down the hall. The Ghost ran another check, just to be sure. Vance cocked his head to the side, listening intently.

_"__it endured, why couldn't iiiiiiiiiii?" _The sibilant whisper crept towards him. _"why am i left alone here in the dark?"_

Nothing. As ever for the Ghost, there was nothing.

_"__I dreamed of a garden, and in the garden was eternity, and in the eternity was nothingness forever," _said the thing that might once have been Churchill down the hall, and it spat a red flower onto the dirty floor. The flower began to spread. In it, he could see strange geometry begin to unfold itself and become a perfect tower.

Vance abruptly whipped around and smashed the side of his face into a mangled edge of pipe, then slumped over. The Ghost spiraled over him immediately, reading darting life signs even as his vital oils were beginning to pool under his frame, staining the plain white mark at his side.

"I read you, Command. You stupid sons of bitches," he said, the gold light in his eyes going dull and faded. "Colossus out." His body jerked once, before a scream came out of his mouth. "_OH HELL, TAKE COVER, TAKE CO-"_ He finished sliding to the ground, twitching again.

The Ghost fluttered in the air, darting over its chosen. _"Vance," _it said, seeking the Exo in the scattered heap of metal on the floor.

"I'm here." The words were slurred. His eyes tried to light up again, still dull and faded. He cursed for a few moments, florid and inventive mercenary's language that would have gotten him shocked looks amongst the rarified scholars of the City.

_"__We go much further, it'll be too dark for me to help you. Can you hear me? Do you understand?" _It whirled, trying to gauge a fixed point for its chosen to cling to, found the obvious one might still work. Its flanging voice became firm. _"You cannot fail your mission. Check in, soldier."_

"'m here... 'm... darkness. Can't fall there." Curt nod. Vance's hand shook uncontrollably, too much incidental servomotor control damage done by the number of strikes he'd put to his own head just to get down this close to the cortex zone. He forced the handgun out of its leg holster, not a weapon he used much. If an encounter was that close, his hands usually suited him just fine. "Ghost."

_"__Guardian..."_

"Thanatonauts," he managed, before jamming the firearm up into a softer place along his jawline, where the plas wire-wraps wouldn't stop the bullet.

. . .

_They were only dozens, but they lined up neatly outside the Baigong defensive shelter that had once been a prosperous mine. The last line in the region. All others had fallen back; to the megacities in Hong Kong and Beijing, to the fabled Last City itself, or to distant, feudal holds that thought they could hold better than an organized wide defense. Idiots._

_In every face the glowing eyes of the inorganic, pinpoints of rainbow light, each steel body firm and ready. As a field commander, he knew the costs of failure. They needed to hold the line. Colossus Prime's team would take point, he'd noted with pride. He-_

DATA CORRUPTED##BEGIN REINITILIZATION 5-4-3-2-1 /compile/

_access entry, please authorize USER: _##########-#####

The body spasmed as the Ghost hovered close over the still form, all its energy pouring into the figure below, all its senses alight and watching for the approach of trouble. It hummed softly to itself, the track of the bullet cutting out its work for it. Light filled the hallway as it worked, using stored resources to fill what it needed.

_access entry, unauthorized please-_

. . .

_He's shaking the shoulders of another Exo, a long-distance sniper. Tactical, but kindly natured. If it weren't for the shitshow, he might be a parts compiler, or an artist's assistant. Had the nature for it. His robotic voice tends towards the placative, and he's telling Vance what he doesn't want to hear. He was the only one who could get away with it, marching with Vance since the kid signed up. Good fella. One of many. He screams those things Vance doesn't want to hear into his face. "We can't. SIGINT's uncommunicative, you saw what's going on out there, you SAW."_

_"__Damn the organics! We hold the line, no matter what." He snarls into the good-natured Exo's face, knowing that what he's saying is a death sentence for the remaining squad. He was stuck on repeat. He had no choice, and he hated the ones that had given the order._

(_why can't I remember the name?_ Thoughts snapped freely inside the recompiling mind. _Why can't I-)_

##DATA RECOMPILATION STALLING – ACCESS DEEP STONE CRYPT ALGORITHM? Y/N

y – chk recompile

##WELCOME AUTHORIZED USER -#-#-

. . .

_For a brief, fleeting second, an eternity for a machine, there is no hallway, no tomb, no City, and no mission. There is only the tower beyond the field, and the blood, and the screams, and the fight. His soul-self goes forward, and he doesn't know if he makes it. It doesn't matter._

_There is only the unending war. The tower is just the doorway to the next siege._

Vance's mind sparked alive, and his body spasmed again before falling into the reset-echos.

_. . ._

"_THEY LEFT US, SIR. THEY LEFT US, THEY LEFT US." Spiraling shrieks of the fraction of Exos left to him. The sky was red, tearing, something coming right for them. Behind him, cowards, in front of him the mission and something hurt even though he believed he should not feel pain-_

##PREPARING FINAL REINITILIZATION - PLEASE DO NOT INTERRUPT - PROCESSING

_and the sky tore open and he saw the nice guy (what was his NAME?) who had tiny enough hands for a paintbrush but spent the last decade with a rifle instead fall down in front of him with his knees in a mangle and the light wasn't in his eyes and he knew they were lost. He'd helped kill them and the guilt spread through his frame while the light grew redder and HOTTER and-_

##THANK YOU AND HAVE A NICE DAY##

_flash of a young woman's eyes, green and staring. And then everything else after in a burst of blue and white light._

_. . ._

The Exo's metal frame seized once, convulsed back into life with the brilliant gold gleam filling his eyes again. They fixed on the Ghost, who spun low and close, pinching its shell towards him in relief before spinning away again, freshly startled by the low moan that came from the blued steel mouth. "Why did you choose _me_?"

It said nothing yet, waiting for him to finish.

"There were others! Good people, people that weren't stupid single minded assholes. Not _things _like me_, _not just _machines. _They were better! All I ever knew was the mission! Any mission! I go forward, all I know. Why _me?"_

_"__There was only you." _Its voice was calm and implacable.

Vance pulled himself onto his rump, touching his face to verify all his plates were restored. The hand still shook, psychosomatic response. "I hate this place. I never want to hear about Warminds again. Even dead, they're trouble." He struggled upright, looked down the hall. Nothing. The shade was gone for now, unable to find access. At least for a little while. He pushed what had just happened away, focused forward instead. His best, final defense. "Say the worst of it's down below?"

_"__No physical danger, I believe. But... the cortex has been sealed away for a long time with only darkness to keep it company. I may not have enough Light to chase that away for long. We should not dawdle there."_

"Then we work quick, do what we gotta do in there, and prep for the demo phase. Right?" He glanced up to catch its agreeable spiral, gave it a curt nod.

. . .

It was worse below. Without the shadows to scream for it, the tomb was dead silence, something mournful and lost. An atrocity, with no one left to grieve for it. Everything the Collapse had been was made real in that place. The pinnacle of the Golden Age, in a shattered ruin.

The Warmind cortex-fragment sat in what was once an elegant construction, a perfect creation inside a perfect dome. A chapel for the mind's ultimate possibility. To create something beyond human comprehension, those lost scientists looked to mathematical symmetry. Its exposed wiring coiled in a Fibonacci, the buzzing console that monitored it showed a brain like a Mandelbrot blot, capable of extending itself forever along the fringe to learn and adapt. The casing itself hurt him to look at, the need to house the calculations of eternity in something physical pushing the edges of fourth-dimensional physics. And what was within was forever unrecognizable.

_"__We could never remake something like this. Not with what we have now. Perhaps in a millenia, should we fight back the dark." _

"And not with these parts. No wonder Cayde didn't want salvage outta here. Place is cursed. I wouldn't trust a damn screw from this place."

_"__I was thinking about the Ship of Theseus." _The remark got the Ghost a look while Vance crept carefully towards the wiring. Instinct only, he kept waiting for the dead thing to give him a jump scare. _"The paradox made flesh, so to speak. If a thing is replaced piece by piece, is it still itself when all is ultimately replaced? Essence and identity. Intrinsic worth. Would recreating this place bit by bit someday, piece by piece, make a new Warmind, or simply awaken the old one?"_

"Yeah, I don't know about any of that. All I know is, if I took a scrap from this place and jammed it into an archaic walkie-talkie, I wouldn't trust that walkie-talkie to not start cajoling people into killing themselves to keep it company in hell."

_"__Well, that's a visual. I think I agree. On the original topic, though, as an Exo, it's a vital philosophical conundrum. Are you more than the sum of your parts?"_

"If we're suddenly not talking about the Warmind and actually about you picking me, you can just leave it right there. Not in the mood anymore." He jammed his fist into the spiraling wires and gave them a mighty yank, tearing them. There were no sparks, no protest. "Usually you save all this crap for Beck anyway."

_"__You never want to listen, where she always does." _It whistled once, amused.

"Great. Now it's literally whistling in the dark." He grunted, annoyed, and put his fist through the console. _That _sparked. He heard a scream from the laboratory foyer outside. "Didn't like that."

_"__You're tearing up its flesh. What's to like?"_

Another gibbering howl. The thud started to begin again inside his skull from the force of it. "I have never looked forward to blowing something up this much in my life." He kicked the console for good measure. "That I remember. How long we been down here?"

_"__Four hours and thirty-six minutes."_

"'K." He moved around the room, tearing open panels to expose vital hardware. "You got a demo plan by now?"

_"__I've identified four nodes where a series of explosions should chain through the complex and toast it completely. 87% probability of disintegration in this area."_

He thought of Baldwin and his roasted cortex. "That should about do it. Let's get the hell out of here and rig up what we can."

_"__And check on our hapless prisoner."_

Right. Troy. He'd almost forgotten about Troy. "Any suggestions for that guy?"

_"__Your call."_

Great. He shrugged, following the Ghost's light back out of the darkness. With each step, the thud lessened in his skull. Maybe he wouldn't have to eat his gun again to get through. He hoped not. There were still echoes in the back of his mind – what the _hell _had been that guy's name?

Fragments. He shook his head and kept going.

When they stepped out into open sky again, it was like weightlessness. He pinged the waveslider again, and almost immediately got the response ping. "Poor kid," he muttered, not realizing he spoke aloud.

_"__What was that?"_

He stared balefully at the Ghost when it looked at him, and didn't repeat himself.


	13. Short Change Hero

13. Short Change Hero

. . .

_"__No life signs." _The Ghost's voice was urgent, interrupting Vance's thoughts on where to begin piecing together the explosives he needed. On reflex, he ducked just inside the the burst-out doorway of the tomb and started scanning the horizon. _"Heat readings fading from the bunker twenty meters ahead."_

That meant a body. Vance swore. "Nothing else?"

_"__Nothing on the motion tracker."_

He stayed crouched low and scanned again. He trusted the Ghost, but he was compelled forever to verify a situation. Still staying as small a target as possible, he began the slow crawl towards where he'd left Troy Monast tied up in one of the RAF bunkers. A walk of barely a couple minutes became a quarter of an hour journey, pausing at every flutter of shadow or nightbird's trill.

He made it to the corner of the building, peeking cautiously around it and then ducking his head behind. There were lots of vantage points in the hills above. Just because the remaining camp of Fallen were out of immediate scanning range didn't mean they weren't there, and didn't have a scope set on the airfield looking for him. If they'd found Troy bound up, they'd know for a fact someone else was there.

He peeked again, taking a little more time to glance. The entry to the bunker was as he'd left it. Without needing to be asked, the Ghost spiraled up a little to widen its scan. When it didn't alert him, he crept forward and then ducked inside.

Troy Monast had a single hole in his head. He was slumped still half-upright, one wrist mangled but torn free, clearly having worked himself towards his own escape during the hours Vance was in the tomb. The effort had pushed him closer to the bunker's doorway – too close, apparently. The angle of the shot indicated the Fallen sniper had probably seen the human framed pretty as a picture. With all the time in the world to perfect their aim.

"Guess that solves my dilemma," muttered Vance-17, irritated. Executing the human _had_ been on the list; a single choice among many, weighted with the knowledge that Troy's excavation of the tomb could threaten the Vanguard. It wasn't a troubling choice. His only preference was to know that death was the optimal selection.

Now that choice was out of his hands.

_"__Motion on the high northwest ridge." _The Ghost shifted back out of the bunker, its gleaming blue eye fixed on the far hills. It was smart enough to hover erratically, ensuring it kept itself a small and obnoxious target.

"Sniper?"

_"__Multiple targets, unknown configuration."_

"Shit."

_"__...Yes."_

He shifted to the doorway and glanced up himself. There was a distant shimmer alright, probable shadows of motion. Stealthed vandals. Yes, he was grateful for the Ghost's extra sensors. "I remember our talk earlier."

_"__They're not going to let anyone out." _

He shifted the machine gun on his back. "I can't fault the logic. Think they'd give a rip if I yelled up there that we're just gonna blow the place and hoof it?"

The Ghost floated back down to his eye level and tilted his ridges forward – the construct's equivalent of a long, cool look.

He sighed. That was a complication he didn't want. With control of the field in their hands, and a decisive terrain advantage, he would have a hard time mounting an assault himself. Sure, the construct could get him back on his feet in a lot of situations. Maybe not so much with a bunch of Fallen sitting on his dead shell playing soccer with his Ghost, though.

The Ghost was still giving him that long stare.

"Yeah, I'm not going to rush them."

_"__Just checking."_

"They won't come down. I can't go up. That about the situation?"

The blue eye dimmed and lit again in a silent acknowledgment.

"Well. Might as well stay busy meanwhile, see if the situation changes. Plot me a covered route around the bunkers. They got ordinance, I got a need."

. . .

The Fallen stayed in the ridgeline, moving occasionally to keep his trail in view. He had a close call once, a sniper's bullet tracing a hot line across rusting metal and missing his skull by an inch. Not too much of a worry right then; the Ghost would have enough time to get him back up on his feet before a close-range party decided to finalize him. Didn't change that he was trapped meanwhile.

His thoughts ticked on while he pieced together high-impact IEDs from scraps of explosive material. A lot of crap was still intact on the airfield, protected in giant plastic tubs up off the ground and parceled out among the aboveground bunkers. They still had to go back in, wire up the place. It'd be useful if the Fallen would crawl down, get into range while he worked. He could drop them all if they were on his level, no problem.

He was pretty sure they wouldn't. They were cagey enough to not bring a Servitor on their little Hunt-the-Guardian trip. No doubt knew what happened to the other camps. And they knew damn well by now that he was an Exo as well as a Guardian. They weren't going to chance another nut robot going full-auto murder party on them.

He finished wiring the secondary trigger-charge on the last crude explosive, thick fingers fumbling through work better designed for delicate hands. Good enough. They'd do the job. He shoved the device into one of the rough canvas sacks he'd found and slung it carefully onto his back with the rest. It was time to go back down. He pinged the waveslider, hoping this trip would be quicker.

. . .

_"__I'll ask the question, then. We wire the place and prepare the remote detonator. Then what?"_

"Well, I was kinda hoping they'd get bored and screw off, giving me a chance to leg it to survival range."

_"__Funny." _Its voice echoed just inside the tomb's doorway, laced with the other, whining sounds below. _"I've recalculated effective survival range based on using your Ward."_

"Guess I should have practiced that crap more." He kept low, glancing out to note one of the flickering, camoflauged shadows in the distance shifting to keep him in view.

_"__It might have helped. You can survive the close-range detonation, however, shaving some 40% off of effective range. All you need to do is get to the outer edge of the airbase and into the lowland there. Neither zone has useful cover."_

"So then I'm sniper bait. Before and after."

It gave a low, dolorous whistle of agreement.

"We gotta push the Fallen somehow. Or we all die here." He looked down into the tomb's corridor, not particularly delighted with returning. "That is an option. Just blow it, and whichever ones are in range can eat shit with me. The rest still up by their camp, whatever."

_"__I have just enough self-interest to not be thrilled with that idea."_

"You'll ride along, though."

_"__If that's your final choice."_

Its tone was neutral, irritating him afresh as he knew there was something important it wasn't saying. Something it wanted him to figure out on his own. "Job's almost done. It gets done, no matter what."

The Ghost said nothing to that.

. . .

It took vastly less time to wriggle through the ruins of the tomb again, helped by the fact that he didn't have to linger near the central core. He chucked in one of the bomb packs and glanced to see that it landed near the load-bearing pillars they'd picked out, ignoring the attention-demanding wails that seemed to come from every corner of the place.

They were getting louder again, wheedling and crying.

He popped a forced reboot early on. He was tired of listening, tired of the whole damn job. The voices in his head, the echoes of the past – screaming companions, the empty silence of SIGINT and whatever they couldn't tell him before the sky opened up – were friendlier than Churchill's seething demands to live once more. Open him up and hollow him out, fill him with the dead things instead. Yeah, he'd rather be pissed off trying to remember that one guy's name.

He spent a dour little space after his reboot grumbling crankily to the Ghost and wondering aloud how things would have changed if Cayde had been approached by anyone other than an Exo. The Vanguard couldn't have known how bad it had gotten down in the tomb. Finish the mission, no one would ever know. Good deal. He kept trudging, setting the rest of the explosives, and still felt no closer to the solution that would get him out of the Fallen's trap alive. Maybe there wasn't one.

And the Ghost kept silent.

. . .

He rebooted again, close to the entrance but out of the ridge's sight range. He wanted to make damn sure nothing of the tomb was left inside him; burn it all out along with the coming explosion. Even if he died, he didn't want to go with that crap inside him. So he slumped over again, the clear sky now just achingly out of reach, the durable handgun falling to the ground while the Ghost hovered at its duty once more.

And inside him, fragments of memory forever boiled.

_("Soldier, we do the job, no matter what! No matter what!" The reserve corp had pulled back with the rest of the civilians. There was only Colossus Prime left to hold the line beyond the Baigong shelters. They'd made the call, the humans that had tried to keep a home of the distant, desolate place. Frightened, desperate to survive at any cost. Cowardly, frankly. He hated them, but he didn't blame them. He used the hate, kept it fresh to push him forward, pull the rest of his squad with him. They were starting to balk. Without his drive, they saw the futility of what was coming and it made them afraid inside their steel shells. They could be human enough for that._

_But he needed to fight on. That was the job. Stuck on repeat. It made him a good soldier, a damn good soldier. No matter what, he just kept going forward. No need to rely on anyone else. Not ever. They always left him, standing alone, the final line that cannot be crossed, even as the sky lit on fire.)_

_(flashes of the tower at the edge of the war-field and a young woman's eyes.)_

_(no, goddammit, I won't rely on anyone ev-)_

. . .

The Ghost flew up again as Vance snapped back to full activity, waiting for his now-usual post-death tirade.

It didn't come.

It hovered low, hanging at eye-level, looking into the golden eyes with its lone blue one. It waited in silence as they stared at each other. "You know," said Vance at last, putting his thick hands together in a calm, conversational way. "You can take all your philosophical crap and meaningful life lessons and jam it right up whatever you've got for an exhaust port."

_"__I love you, too, Vance. Can I assume your aggression means something useful has occurred to you?"_

"Can't just suggest things sometimes, can you? All of you are terrible about this. Just spit it out. Don't make me dig, I'm not a damned Cryptarch."

_"__I need you to make your choi-"_

Vance swatted at it, deliberately missing by a huge margin. His voice wasn't angry. "Hell did I just say." He hoisted himself to his feet once more and shifted closer to the entrance, checking the display on the waveslider to make sure it could get connection. There was no doubt in his mind the kid was still on the other end of the line. It was just how she was, the realization somehow both startling and oddly warm. He was _not _alone on the mission. With a glance at his Ghost, he accepted he never had been.

Then he did one thing he had never done before, never realizing that he could throughout dozens of hot fragments of raging memory. Of unending wars, all of which he perceived himself as alone, the last stand.

He called for help, for once believing it would actually come.


	14. Unstoppable

14. Unstoppable

. . .

Beck fled up the wide, starkly grey halls of the tower, following Cayde-6's busy trail and chased by the echoes of her own pounding feet. She'd gone straight to the Vanguard's high nest and found it empty, sped herself past a flustered Frame to check his also vacant office, and was now headed for an expansive conference room a floor down or so. Vance-17's calm, careful requests repeated in her mind – always a stickler for field details, working with his Ghost on the waveslider had made her even better at keeping things straight. So getting him exactly what he needed wasn't going to be a problem.

Finding the damned Hunter, though. That was the sticking point.

She all but screeched to a stop before a set of security Frames and the lurking mountain that was the guy that did the up front Crucible stuff. Saladin. Her heart dropped into her stomach. No way she was going to get past them. Beyond she could hear a mild din – the conference itself. She pieced together fragments of conversation around her, realized all the Vanguard were inside and probably trying to stay awake as Faction leaders and City notables aired minor grievances. She backed away from the line and considered her options as her hands wrung together.

Around her, Guardians milled. She glanced up at their faces, noticed a few of them looking at her in amusement. Just some little civilian trying to get into the hall. To most of them, she was nobody. They looked away again. Feeling her familiar irriation kick in, she met their eyes with defiant ones of her own, looking for the one that might help.

It took a long few minutes but she locked eyes with an older human woman against the far wall. A greying brow lifted a little at her, still amused, and the woman beckoned her over with a finger inside an armored glove when Beck refused to look away first. Her plain, dark robe rustled when she stepped forward to meet Beck. "You look busy, _devochka. _Needy."

"Can you help me get in? I've got a message for one of the Vanguard. Please, it's important."

"If quite so important, should you not have a way to do it yourself?"

Beck swallowed. "I don't. I'm helping someone else. Another Guardian."

"_That _kind of important." The corners of the woman's eyes crinkled a little. "Give a little more, and I will get you what I can. What Guardian?"

"A Titan. You probably don't know him. He... keeps to himself." The woman waited, a patient statue. She reminded Beck of Angela and she swallowed the out-of-place nostalgia for home, focusing on what she needed now. "Vance-17."

The woman blew air out her nostrils, a sedate and private little laugh. "Oh, I know of him, _devochka. _Many of us do, I think, by story if not by name. Keeps a very busy man. Brusque. But good soldier. I would not expect him to ask for help, but you have a face that looks poor for lies. So I must assume this is indeed important."

A thought occurred to her. "Can you ask your Ghost to talk to the Vanguard for me?"

"Not quite so easy as that, unfortunately. Don't look sad. Their Ghosts are cautious about such talk and by your face, perhaps you do not want your alert going out so openly. But I have a way almost as easy." She crooked out her arm for Beck to take. "Come, then. Guardians should help Guardians. Always. I get us in, no trouble."

. . .

The woman was as good as her word, sailing them both into the meeting with the company of a few other Warlocks whose armbands shone brightly high on their biceps. With the same ease, she wedged them carefully through the crowd in the conference hall, eventually settling them squarely behind a Dead Orbit representative team and next to some muttering businessmen from Tex Machina. In the center before them, voices droned while the Vanguard conferred with each other. Cayde nodded at all the important sounding bits, seldom bothering to look up as some Awoken man kept droning about supplies. From the gist of what she heard, it seemed the supply chain was fine, there weren't any problems, but it was time to hold forth for most of an hour on just-in-cases and unsubtle pleas for more glimmer investments. So, politics as usual.

The Warlock woman gently guided Beck in front of her, squarely framed between some of the men. She patted Beck's shoulder once, the woman's own Ghost arriving to spin a little flurry of movement. That got Ikora's attention, just a flutter of lashes in their direction. The Warlock Vanguard tugged once at a tablet stuck underneath Cayde's arm, jostling him.

Beck watched him jerk almost imperceptibly, her own eyes widening in disbelief. As much as Exos couldn't 'sleep' as humans did, the Hunter had definitely been something like dozing. He met Ikora's eyes first and then the aqua blue gaze picked her out from the crowd almost immediately. He slouched back in his seat, no other reaction for at least a minute. Then he dipped over to confer with Zavala. He gave a theatrical stretch when he was done and slunk out of his chair, sailing out of the room with a salute. No one remarked on this. It seemed perfectly natural from the eccentric Hunter.

Ikora turned her head slightly and gave Beck a single blink under half lidded eyes.

The hand at her shoulder patted again. "_Prostoy. _Last step."

. . .

Cayde-6 met them outside the meeting hall, beckoning from the creaking door of a mostly unused service tunnel. He kept himself mostly out of view, not drawing any notice from the last few stragglers. "Guessing we don't need to stand much on ceremony, kid. Beck, sorry." He nodded his blue steel head at the woman. "Hey, _Frontovichka. _Doing your part to keep things interesting?"

"Girl looked needy. Also looked persistent." The woman shrugged. "I figure I help, we don't have big scene outside meeting hall." She smiled down at Beck.

"Good eye. Thanks." He looked at Beck when the woman left, his demeanor turning serious. "Your guy isn't a real expert at asking for help. How much feces has hit how many fans?"

She told him, down to precise quotes from Vance. He whistled low. "Let's go to your place. My Ghost'll catch up."

. . .

"Okay, Guardian. You read me?"

_"__Clear." _Vance sounded exhausted. It was unmistakeable now. She frowned, hands forever wringing together for him.

"I got the skinny and I got the goods being packaged now. Paging a delivery to your place." He tapped his own long-suffering Ghost with a single finger. It hovered stolidly, used to Cayde's irreverence. "When I say _time _again, that marks it twenty minutes out. That's your cue to plan around. Good?"

_"__Excellent." _A crackling, static pause followed by a taciturn rumble. _"This job sucked."_

"Yeah, figured. Sorry about that. And I want that debrief, Guardian, so come back intact." Cayde dropped onto his elbows next to the strung out guts of the waveslider, switching the communication to _off._ "...And I want the recipe for this thing. This is pretty neat."

She flushed at the compliment. "Vance's Ghost helped. I have a plan for it."

"Well, you got a hell of a test run out of all this. Let me know when your production model's done. I got a few ideas myself already." He looked away, seemingly lost in thought. She realized he was connecting directly with his Ghost. He switched the waveslider's transmission on again. "Time."

_"__Verified. See you soon."_

"Is he going to be all right?" She asked the question after the static faded.

"Kid, I think you know the answer to that better than I do." He looked away again. "'Kay, bombing run's taken off of the flight deck. Not something we do often, but it ain't rare, either. Nobody's going to question hot-dropping a bunch of Fallen in a restricted zone. They'll only question why I'm not offering free tacos and some beer with the job. Do you know tacos? They're pretty amazing things."

She did not know tacos and tried to ignore it. "They'll stay out of the altitude he gave?"

"I put the _least_ imaginative Guardians I can think of on that run, and no Exos. As requested. They'll stay on the flight plan." He flapped a hand. "Tacos. Soft corn shell – well, _some_ heathens use flour. Seasoned meat. Cilantro. They smell godly. Pre-Golden Age, but you better believe they were still a thing then."

She stared at him.

"Yeah, I don't eat 'em. But humans should, damn. Light up my olfactory senses like crazy." He sounded envious. "There's a guy out by Holliday's place that does 'em off this filthy cart I think he's had since the Hive dropkicked the Moon. When did you eat last?"

She gestured at the waveslider. "I shoul-"

"He's alone from here. Nothing either of us can do till he gets back." His voice grew firm. "You haven't slept, you probably haven't eaten, _and _you tried to march on a City meeting. Food. We go eat. Well, _you_ eat. I will smell chopped onions." He lifted a single metal finger. "Vanguard's orders."

"You just don't want to go back that meeting," she accused.

"Darlin', I serve and protect the City, with all my metal heart and soul." He put a palm across his torso, looked down to realize he was swearing an oath on where a human would have an esophagus, scooched his hand up and over a little to try and get the right spot. He pitched his voice low and soulful. "From the various organizations to the individual man or woman that needs us." He dimmed his eyes at her in a wink. "Also, would _you?"_

. . .

Fifteen minutes out. Vance gauged his timing – setting off the detonation was going to be the primary thing to juggle. The primitiveness of his setup meant that a timed and programmed explosive was out of the question. When he toggled the detonator, he was going to have at _best _three seconds before the whole location went hot. It would take fifteen to get to minimum safe distance and drop a Ward. Bonus difficulty; the range of the detonator was going to cut out just meters away from the entrance, due to environmental factors. Yeah, it wasn't an optimal op situation. Oh, well.

Plus there was the whole thing about asking for a handful of Kestrels to go screaming overhead with an ordinance load aimed for the ridgeline. Well, at least that meant he didn't have to worry about the snipers any more. Once the sounds of the ships came into range, they were going to have all sorts of new things to pay attention to. Screw their aim, at least. He hoped whoever Cayde sent had good targeting, otherwise a misaimed drop into the middle of the airfield was going to mean the day was going to go all kinds of crappy.

He sighed to himself and looked over his shoulder. The shadows weren't gathering, but the whispering was starting again. He wasn't concerned, not this close to the entrance. Now he mostly just felt bad for the damned thing. It pleaded and begged and asked questions he had no answer for.

_"__why did IT survive and we cannot? Why did IT find the garden? Why did IT leave us here? Oh, mommy, the daaaaark..."_

Like a child with its hands clasped over its ears, crying for rescue from the thing under the bed. "Too bad you're the thing under there," he muttered.

_"__Vance?"_

"Nothing." A fleeting doubt visited him and he humored it. "Your Ship of Theseus thing and all..."

_"__I understand. We can't save it. It was lost a long time ago."_

"Do we got souls? Any of us?" He shifted, uncomfortable with the questions. "The people back then. They made these guys. Made them to be better than the organics. But was that good enough? This thing... died doing what it was supposed to for people. So is that it? Or does it get some sort of cosmic second chance? Like I did. If I did. Shit, I don't know what I'm asking."

_"__In this strange universe we inhabit, would you think it so unlikely that life itself is less well-defined than humans once believed?" _It floated down to him, its blue eye twinkling bright. _"And here we are to prove it. And here we'll be."_

"Here we'll be," he confirmed, the doubt gone. A single chime sounded in his ears. On reflex, he looked up at the sky.

The sound of monstrous thunder began to tear through it.

. . .

He counted off the seconds in his mind, tensing the plasteel and titanium pistons lashed together to form his legs. His helm kept count of the seconds he had left:

_5..._

The thunder began to rattle through the earth all around him, jostling up through his feet. In a spark of realization, he dumped the heavy machine gun. He could get a replacement easy, and it would improve his velocity.

_4..._

Underneath the tearing sky, the lone sounds of an offended Vandal shrieked a jangling undertone. He pushed forward, first steps pounding into the grassy earth just outside the torn door of Churchill's tomb. A stray bullet streaked across his arm, leaving a hot melted scratch in his finish. He ignored it and

_3..._

hit the detonator button as his stride lengthened into a full-tilt run, automatically adjusting as the ground began to ripple. He rode the wave of Earth as it tried to toss and writhe against all the junk along its surface. Another bullet rode close but then the ridgeline lit up in shrieking orange flames

_2..._

followed by searing black smoke. The air itself seemed set on fire now, but there was the little valley just ahead, outlined by his helmet 's display and the Ghost's helpful mapping. Just a little more, and he'd make it. Just another few steps and

_1..._

he lunged through the air, helmet marking his success. On impact, he dropped a shield of gleaming blue around his form, the Ghost huddling close to him. Deep below, in the cavernous halls that once thronged with life in attendance to one of the Earth's greatest creations, the last explosives flared alive

_Detonation complete..._

and the world

shuddering all around him

lit up

in burning white

_Light_...

. . .

Cayde-6 clasped his hands together on his lap, leaned back from his dinged-up old desk. The Exo in front of him didn't look much better, but his pose was forever stoic and his eyes were a bright and lively gold. "That is... one hell of a story you've brought me."

"Not one I hope to repeat anytime soon."

"Right?" He reached up to absently tug at his hood. Beck had walked down to the office with Vance-17, left after ensuring that her lips were sealed and tossing Cayde a welcome hug. Kid still smelled like onions, too.

_God, _he was envious of that. Cart guy had that green salsa stuff, smelled all sparky and crisp. He snapped himself back to attention. "Sorry. So, just to underline, it's over. Shame Troy Monast took one in the skull, but that's the breaks." He didn't bother to sound sorry. "Feel way more badly for the rest of his team. I wish I'd known more to warn you with. Hell, wish I'd done a better job finishing it last time. Could have avoided a lot of pain for a lot of people."

Vance shrugged. "You couldn't know. No battle plans for this kinda thing. Audrey?"

"Won't be a problem from here."

"Good enough for me." The Titan's posture loosened slightly. "Am I dismissed?"

"All business, big guy." Cayde grinned. "One more thing I wanna tell you. Feel like it's important."

That got him a look, careful and close. He leaned forward, stretching his arms along the desk and tapping his fingers together. "Listen," he started, then stopped silent, accidentally making a paradox. Even with an Exo-quick mind, it was sometimes hard to put the right words together. "Lots of people, Guardians even... They get here and then they set out to make a name for themselves at all costs. They often do good works because they got that drive, yeah. They forge that name out of whatever they can throw themselves at. Big ol' beacons of Light."

He chuckled, thinking of a few before continuing. "Others work quiet, work hard. Never look for recognition until the day they realize – maybe uncomfortably – that folks been noticing all along. Those are the ones that end up collecting names to 'em like gifts."

Vance kept looking at him. Cayde jutted his chin towards the door Beck had gone through, finished the gesture with an easy smile. "Here's your first – The Guardian with Two Ghosts."

The gold eyes dimmed, considering that. Then he nodded slowly. He put two fingers to his forehead and snapped a salute. Then he left, his Ghost at his shoulder and the future ahead of him.

. . .

"Heh. Two Ghosts. Pretty good, Cayde. Pretty good..." The Hunter scrounged up his squeezy toy from the clutter on his desk and gave it a honk. "See you again real soon, big guy."

. . .

_There will be a brief commercial break before Part II continues here. And now, station identification. Please stand by for Tower transmission..._


	15. Interlude: And Now, the News

Interlude: And Now, the News

. . .

_You're watching Opticon, the first name in City news and information – OPTICON, where YOU are the City's eyes! Tonight: The annual State of the Consensus is out and we'll have the first EXCLUSIVE viewing of Executor Hideo's remarks, plus discussion and commentary from some of the City's brightest pundits. We'll be there for YOU for the good of all!_

_Tonight we've also got the top stories to cover – what's going on in the zone once known as 'Kazakhstan' and, controversially, WHY won't the Vanguard comment publicly on increased operations in that territory? Does it have anything to do with increased seismic activity throughout the northern regions? We'll ask the hard questions for YOU. Also coming up, we've got an in-depth story about the Reclaimers – that NEW movement of Earth's rugged survivalists taking a last-ditch effort to take back the land for their own._

"Ugh. We're not _new." _Beck flipped the thin remote that controlled the small-scale holo-vid in her hand, finding nothing decent to view despite it being City prime time. Not surprising; the City had three publicly available feeds competing with each other, all three headquartered in the rarified center zone of the City. There were also countless cruddy underground feeds where any City denizen (or, occasionally, tweaky Guardian) could have a platform. Hey, it kept people busy.

The best of these, in her opinion, was the frequently available stream of a harmless fanatic who kept a rigged Frame with an optics gazer installed around to film him as he made tiny plasteel and scrap sculptures of all the prettiest landscapes from Earth's history, dotting them with little wire people and beautifully painted backdrops. That part was a titch weird. Guy was great at what he did, but so far in the zone that he seemed off in space by himself. He also liked to mutter happy little platitudes to himself while he worked, though. It was sort of touching. Made good napping background noise. Beck had heard a rumor once that the guy was a Guardian himself, some ancient Hunter that had hung up a sniper rifle for his sculptures after Twilight Gap, but figured that was probably just the greatest lie she'd ever heard.

_Our investigators go out to see if we can find some of these cautious pioneers to talk to. Also - some of Dead Orbit's top minds will be with us to help break down some of the challenges these brave new pioneers face! Stay with us for more!_

She moaned theatrically while she fiddled with the vid's control, pretending to gag with all the drama and verve that could have once been found on a historical Shakespearean stage.

"Quit watching that crap if you're gonna be so annoyed about it." Something heavy thudded onto a workbench to emphasize Vance's words.

"Are you kidding? I'm going to rec the feed of that story and send it on to Da with the next shipment. He'll love to hate it. It'll be great."

_. . ._

_CLICK_

_. . ._

_-veloping news story tonight as the official identification of a body found near the Gap last month has been released. Cordel Audrey was a bright light in New Monarchy's organization, well-liked and rumored to even have potential as a future choice for Executor. Always modest about his goals, Audrey, seen here at the Consensus public meeting last year, was a tireless figure in the City's efforts to support its citizens and its Guardians. Audrey had been missing since his last appearance at a Crucible event almost three months ago. Now, that bright lit is dimmed in what has been described by authorities as a tragic suicide. Executor Hideo has already made a private statement of condolence to Audrey's family and is expected to make a public statement in a few days. We'll break in live when that happens. And now, a few words from our sponsors - _

_. . ._

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Tiny text at the bottom of the holovid projection, viewable for exactly 1.5 seconds: _*full sponsorship funding is publicly available under City Proclamation Act .45.6.777/a and can be viewed at - _

_. . ._

_CLICK_

_. . ._

_"__As long as there are good citizens left to stand for, New Monarchy will stand with them." _Hideo, resplendent in the red robes of his faction, pounded once on the tall Consensus podium for emphasis. _"We do not give up on this great Earth, or its great peoples. We are one City, UNITED against the long dark. I promise you, as I promise at every State of the Consensus, that we will NEVER forget where our loyalties are." _He made a sweeping gesture. _"With each and every one of you."_

Wild applause filled the vidfeed.

"Bullshit," floated the low mutter through the doorway of the loadout room. Metal slapped and scraped together. Beck snorted at the concise summary.

Back on the feed, a clamor began to drown out the expected applause. _"Executor! Executor!" _One voice grew louder than the rest. _"Anil Bradash for Opticon. Do you have any comment on the allegations Cordel Audrey's family is making?"_

_"__Audrey's family is grieving and I don't think it's approp-"_

_"__They're standing by the statement that it's too early to name their son's death a suicide and intimate that y-"_

A surprise rescue flickered in from the right side of the feed. _"This is not the right venue or time for those allegations, Opticon. You know that." _Cayde-6 sounded long suffering, his fingers steepled together soulfully, and with respect. _"Now, y'all can ask all your questions at a better time, but tonight's for the City." _The briefest of pauses._ "Since I can see that's not satisfying you, let me say this much: Hideo's been open and transparently involved with the investigation, which of course the Vanguard is also consulting on due to the high-ranking nature of that poor lost soul – I'll refer you to Security Frame Danno-87 for more details – and I think it's safe to say we can leave it there for now. Okay, next question!"_

"Don't play poker with Cayde," came the muted voice of Vance again. "He cheats."

"They really got the Executor down cold, don't they?" She lifted her head a little to call the question over to Vance, ignoring the feed as Cayde left the podium.

"Like they said, he knows how the game's played. This'll finish blowing over in a couple more days, but the Vanguard'll have him controlled by the curlies for a while to come. His fingers might be technically clean, but this whole mess blew up under his roof. Nobody's gonna forget that."

She wondered how the Speaker felt about all this. If he even knew. She'd only ever seen the white-clad figure once, high on the balcony of his observatory as she'd passed through the Vanguard Tower's open quads on some errand. He seemed as driftingly distant as the vid sculptor, and rumored to be almost as fixated on his own path – that of discerning the Traveler's silent needs.

A different question occurred to her. "How'd he die? Audrey?"

A rustle before the frame of the Exo filled the doorway. The fragile internal skeleton of the gun he was still working on dangled lightly from one hand. "Didn't you hear 'em, kid? Suicide."

"But-"

"I don't know, and you don't either. Let's leave it there, Beck." His voice was mild. It didn't matter what the answer was – whether the Vanguard had finished it, or if indeed New Monarchy had cleaned up its own mess privately and with only a single bullet. It was a done thing.

She bit her lip. "Seems... a little dark."

"Sometimes it's the best way, the only way, to keep the light bright. Someone's gotta do the dark things. The hard things. So nobody else gotta be dirty. That's leading. Sometimes. Yeah, it's not always optimal." He shrugged and disappeared back into the loadout room, jostling a large toolbox as he moved.

"The Ghost is finally rubbing off on you!" She grinned as he muttered something dour and unintelligible back at her.

. . .

_CLICK_

_. . ._

"_We were not meant for Earth alone. We were meant for stars and ether and nebulae and all the great lights of the universe. And we will not end in darkness." _The low, sibilant voice of Arach Jalaal rolled through the feed, his hand up to stop the Opticon interviewer's protestation. _"That these men and women fight against the broken ruins of this planet to bend it again to their will is not meaningless. You asked me if I think reclaiming the Earth is a foolish mission. I won't answer that. My Faction's chosen duty speaks that answer. But I will say this much - these are not foolish people, these farmers and ranchers and children that walk away from the City. They are extraordinarily brave. Dead Orbit's desires are in utter opposition to theirs, but the conflict is centered on the idea that we look out... and they look within."_

_"__You have to agree it looks like folly." _Scattered footage of a small farm played while the unseen interviewer talked, one Beck recognized from the landscape as only a week's march away from the City itself. Her stomach flopped over as the footage continued. The farm was on fire and the three families that had shared the land were wandering around, openly weeping. A small body lay under a sheet.

A small Fallen incursion had found them, burned them right out of the little parcel of land in the nearby valley just days ago. Too quickly for Guardians to save them all. She'd seen the report. Vance had let her when she asked, worried if it had been anyone she knew. Any family breaking from Adytum, her home. She felt guilty relief when she read the names and didn't know any of them.

_"__They kept too close to the City, a mistake. Too much signal trail." _Arach Jalaal grunted. Beck lifted both her eyebrows almost to her hairline. He was right. Exactly the sort of thing Dallas was hell on watching out for. _"This is the only farm you've found for your... story." _The word drawled and rolled in his odd accent. Beck thought he might be mocking the other man.

_"__Well, we're investigating how much of a story this really is-"_

_"__Likely more of one than you bother to think." _The Awoken man crossed his arms and stared at his interviewer. _"The durable ones range far. You won't find them. A shame." _Pale lips thinned in a smile. _"I should greatly wish they would come to us instead with that perseverance. It would be a benefit to Dead Orbit's goals."_

"Is there a word I don't know for not agreeing with someone at all but sort of still liking him for not being a piece of walking garbage? Or would 'respect' work fine for that?" The interview was falling apart as she watched. Two points for Jalaal.

_"__Respect works perfectly fine." _The Ghost whistled its response from Vance's side, having spent most of the night humming quietly to itself. _"Dead Orbit likes its solitude and their stars; standoffish and focused perhaps overmuch on their dogmatic notion that time draws to a close on this blue sphere, but like so many in the City, including the Monarchy, there is little that we might call 'true evil' to them."_

"Just different points of view."

_"__Wisdom comes from many sources, but I find one of the most accessible to be an understanding of perspective."_

She smiled. The report on the vidfeed ended abruptly, shifting over to a serious looking reporter in a glitzy robe tastelessly similar to a Warlock's scholarly one, pontificating aloud about how little they actually knew about 'Reclaimers' despite their best efforts to investigate and winding up the segment with the generic promise of more to come in future times. Except for the bit with Dead Orbit, Beck decided, the whole story was about as useless as a frilly bow on a cave yak. Dallas still might find it angrily amusing.

Another infomercial for Arcus chimed sprightly on the feed and she turned off the device with a too-hard press of her thumb. Slow and sardonic clanking applause came from the loadout room.

"Yeah, I know you watch the Crucible games on replay when you think I'm sleeping," she muttered to herself with a yawn, hoisting herself up. She poked a finger at a pile of supplies that needed to be moved out to the shipyards in the morning. "Don't think I haven't noticed."


	16. II: Never End In Darkness-16 Phone Home

Part II: _Never End in Darkness_

16. Phone Home

. . .

_"__And that's about all I've got, supply-wise. We can get the outgoing tightened up by the next scheduled transmat. Won't be a big one. 'Bout a week from now, according to the schedule." _Images of Dallas flickered through the waveslider; still-slides from distant China. It'd taken Beck weeks with the Ghost's help to upgrade the device enough to get this much. With more time, she might be able to stream the image properly along with the audio despite the slight lag that was the ELF frequency's hallmark. This was still something, the best iteration she could get to the colony through a fast drop-off and a willing Guardian. Enough for now. She watched her Da flicker through various poses; eyes stuck shut, head caught at an awkward angle, mouth frozen weirdly around a word, and smiled. Being able to see him again on the regular made every shot a great one.

It was obvious from his crinkled eyes that it was the same for him. She looked at her notes; the ELF transmissions went in relatively short bursts to protect the colony. They often only used several minutes in any given link. "Any trouble with the back and forth yet?"

_"__Nope. Hive patrols have stayed fairly unpredictable, but the patrol pattern is standard. Our people only get exposed for a couple minutes coming and going. Good people on your end doing the drops; never off course or off their timing."_

She smiled. "I've managed to make some good connections over here."

_"__Damn good ones. Networking with the right people?"_

Beck thought of Cayde-6. As part of his recognized debt on Vance's 'odd job,' he'd been more than happy to put out the word for discreet suppliers with a talent for caution in the field. A few other friends through Guardians and the old families Dallas had known, and she'd built up a pretty decent – if small – trading network over the last couple of months. Not enough to change Adytum, but it meant little luxuries and information – its own luxury – easier to exchange again. With the waveslider connection and a transmat drop plan scouted up through Angela and Dallas, it was pretty foolproof on their end. Only the patrols made it a risk. So much hard work had gone into the whole thing. A lot of nights where Beck hadn't slept much, mind full of geocache info and cargo logistics.

The grin on Dallas' face during their first still-laggy comm made it all worth it.

_"__Listen. I'm going to be sending a couple extra things in this next shipment. They'll be tagged directly for you, so you won't miss 'em with the jerky and the salvage and all else."_

Through the freeze frame images, she could see a trace of something on her father's face. Was it wistfulness? She asked after it, her voice cautious. "Da?"

"_Just some things your mother owned. Think it's long past time you kept them. A couple books, her favorite sari... a few things she made." _The flicker caught his smile. There was pride in it, though the corners of his eyes were tight. It made her throat hurt.

"Don't have to do that. I'll come home soon. I've seen the City, like I wanted." She reached out on instinct, trying to touch the waveslider's display. To comfort him. A piece of her felt confused about the action; the first moment between them where she felt like she was the one in charge. Like a role had just been traded. She swallowed hard around the bony lump stuck somewhere inside.

The smile widened. _"I know, Beck. In a way, it's like I get to let her visit you meanwhile. So take 'em."_

"Okay." Her voice didn't come out with any tremble and only a little raspiness. That was something. A tiny battle won.

_"__Also sending some messages from people here on this one. Everyone here appreciates that, you know. I guess Venn's_ _family has finally made some inroads with their old folks still out there... long story there. Of a type I'm sure you know."_

"I didn't know. If they need anything..."

_"__I told Venn's father that. I know I should have let you know first but..."_

He'd paused just long enough. "You know I'd be there for them. Not even a question."

A bob of his shaggy hair. It never had that much grey in it before. She was sure of it. That pang came again. _"Hey. I keep forgetting to ask. How's the metal man?"_

"Oh god. He's _Vance_." She rolled her eyes, followed it up with a giggle. "Stays busy. I think he's made a few allies, but he won't admit it." The _Frontovichka _Warlock had come around a few times, bringing her own allies along and dragging Vance out on some larger scale patrols. He still came back to the City as dinged up as ever, but the light in his electric gold eyes said he was having a touch more fun than he would admit to aloud. Both Beck and the Ghost thought it was good for him. Also not something _they_ would say aloud to the forever taciturn Exo.

_"__More'n he knows, I bet. Angela says hi to him."_

She laughed. "I will absolutely tell him that."

_"__And on that note..." _The flickering, distant voice became serious. _"Anyone saying anything more about those earthquakes?"_

Beck shook her head. Slight tremors had become a consistent feature, from Kazakhstan through parts of old China. Dallas had said something about a hard rumble through the caves during last transmission, and she'd been doing her due diligence on it. "I'm still asking around, but nobody's got answers. They're covering the seismic activity on the City feeds, but that's got no information. Not being ignored, though. You're not getting any damage out there, are you?"

_"__Would have been the first thing I'd mention, Beck. Don't mean to make that sound sharp. We're still alright, but our geologist is a little worried. Probably because she just has more questions than answers."_

"I'll keep listening."

_"__I know you will, honey." _A long enough pause followed that she thought the feed dropped. _"Thank you for all this. I'll see you again soon."_

_. . ._

Vance toyed with the borrowed tablet, preferring the more accessible streams from his helm or even just a straight neural jack. Tablets never responded to his thick metal fingers the way he liked. Better for Frames or fleshier folk. With a metallic grunt, he put it down and looked at the girl fussing around about as futilely with her soup across the table from him. "Eating it or wearing it, kid?"

"What?" Her eyes flickered to his, focused again. "Erp. Sorry, I'm elsewhere."

"Yeah. You been in China in your head for a while now." He leaned back. "What else is on your mind?"

"Same stuff as ever." She pushed her bowl away and dropped her elbows on the table so she could prop her chin up. "Angela says hi."

He tilted his head slightly, not quite sure what to make of that. "Joke, kid?"

"Nah. I think she's tickled you kept that gun."

"It's a good weapon. Better now." It was. The archaic pulse rifle kept a permanent place in his load-out. He'd blown a lot of favors to get the impact of it perked up again, though. Cost it some ammo speed, but he wasn't going to get caught out by another Captain's shield again. _Damn_ good weapon; the last Fallen patrol he'd cut down had fleeting surprise in their buggy eyes when the bullets lanced through them. "That's not what's on your mind."

She looked away again. "I hate being frustrated."

"Tell _me." _His annoyed electric drawl brought a little smirk. It was something. The Ghost was routinely better at drawing the kid out when she was like this than he was. She'd been drifting a lot lately. Even he'd noticed, and unless he was watching a soft combat target with a tiny window of opportunity, he wasn't rigged to be what other people considered _observant_. Not like he typically cared; emotions weren't his field. But the kid was a good one. She'd been there for him. Worth making some sort of damned effort. "What's the problem? I can shoot it."

She snapped back into focus and then burst into laughter. He decided against explaining that he hadn't actually meant his idea of problem-solving as a joke. "Can you shoot an earthquake?"

"Actually, what you'd do is drop a major load of ordinance down a weak point in the fault to create some seismic waves. Then run like hell. Won't stop it, but you might at least get the big one outta the way. Also, sounds kinda fun."

"Oh my _god." _Another peal of laughter. "It just bugs me that they're feeling it all the way out in Haixi. This is the second time Da's gone out of his way to mention it since the newsfeeds started talking about them. Ghost and I have looked and I know everyone else has, too. There aren't any major faults or whatever. It just keeps rumbling, though."

"Sorry, kid. Nothing else out of the briefings. Warlocks are on it. Heard they're doing some new seismic scanning wherever they can get to. Not easy; there's been a lot of Hive incursion lately. Lots of crossfire between them and the Fallen. Half the teams going out to that region have been to provide cover for just those ops. I did one of those runs myself last week; pretty hot zones."

He watched her face. The truth was clearly not any comfort. The laughter was gone. "_Is _it related to whatever is going on in the Kazakhstan area?"

"I think that's mostly something else." He wasn't privy to the central operation around the old Cosmodrome, although he'd had an interesting moment passing through the offices of the Vanguard one day. Cayde-6 flung up his arms dramatically on seeing him, muttering something about _"What are the odds?" _Matched the scuttlebutt around the Tower – some new Warmind-related wreckage had been stumbled on by a fairly energetic fireteam with old ties to the area, this time maybe with real life in it. If that was the case, he was more than happy to keep on his current orders. One Warmind per lifetime, thanks. "Plenty of Hive there, too, though. Again, can't be sure there's a connection."

"What's the deal? Why are they getting into it with the Fallen so much?"

He lifted his shoulders in an expansive shrug. "Maybe moon rent's getting expensive. Take a bullet as easily as anything else, though, so what do I care?"

She shook her head at him, biting her lip. After another moment, she picked up her bowl and took it over to the counter to clean it out. "I gotta take a run out tonight."

"Dropping down to ground-town?"

"Yeah, I need to update this week's supply list. You need anything?"

"No." He paused, assessing. "Beck?"

She turned from the counter to look at him.

"Hear anything from your people that really sets off those instincts of yours, tell me." He tried to not say it in a way to get her to make that stressed look people got. Apparently, he could have done a better job. She just gave him a brief nod, and a smile.

When she was gone, Vance sent his Ghost after her. Maybe rattling about whatever philosophical nonsense was currently filling the damned thing's circuits would cheer her up a bit.


	17. In Light

17. In Light

. . .

Beck and Vance's Ghost passed a street vendor selling unidentifiable meat grilled on sticks, the smell of it distinctly more feral and gamier than what was probably sold closer to the City's center. She didn't know much about things out that way, couldn't picture what life was like so deep in the shadow of the Traveler. According to the Ghost, that insular sense of community was fairly normal. Many people only really knew their own neighborhoods and maybe the local Tower crew, if it was still an active one.

Her gaze flickered up now and again, noticing the blinding white curve of that enigma as it caught the last traces of flaring sunset. "Can't any of you little guys tell anyone anything about what the Traveler's really like?"

_"__I can only tell you of Light. The rest is mystery."_

She rolled her eyes. The Ghost hummed low in its little chuckle. _"I don't mean to be deliberately obtuse. It is difficult to explain. Have you ever heard the words 'mysterium fidei'?"_

She shook her head and shifted the satchel that held her little tablet and a few trade-trinkets in it, ducking an exhausted salvage duo who weren't watching where they were going. Metal clanked and clattered as they moved, filling the area with drowning sound. She waited until they were well past. "Um. Old Latin. The fidelity of mystery?"

_"__Extraordinarily close. The mystery of faith. A miracle or secret so complex it could only be revealed in full by God. It is a theme in many of your species' belief systems, often diverting to secret iterations that gathered their cults around the concept. I think of the Eleusinian mysteries, specifically. Those ancient rites that moved between long ago sheaves of wheat; the silent mystery between life and death given voice on the lips of priests and initiates, so that another harvest might come. And then the winter and the long dark. And then again, they rise in new spring."_

"Like Guardians."

_"__Like Horus, that child of another such mystery cult, and the phoenix, and the Orphics, and like panspermic life itself. Scattered to roam amidst stars and barren plains until the traveler takes root and that new world sparks alight. An easy comparison, I think. Somewhere in there is the sole gem of what I can describe. The Traveler is so much more than Light that it blinds."_

"I love you, Ghost, but you say so much and I never get any of it." Beck shook her head. "I try, but you're on a totally different level of context. You've probably read things that we don't even have copies of anymore."

_"__You listen. I appreciate that. Understanding comes later, but first, it's a gift to be heard." _It hummed and dawdled in the air, scanning the route ahead for her and noting a Sparrow streetrace to avoid. There was a current fad to toy around with the destabilizers on the already quick-turning vehicles, which usually ended up with someone pinging around like a soccer ball. A little tune of warning and Beck ducked around another corner for an easy detour away from someone's upcoming broken legs.

"It makes me wonder how long you were out there alone, keeping your mind busy. Looking for your Guardian. Did you know you were looking for someone specifically? Is there a guide?"

The Ghost went so quiet she thought it left. She turned her head to look – no, there it was, the blue eye dimmed so dark it was almost gone. "Did I say something to upset you?"

It took a while, but a little spark of azure came back. It chimed. _"Of that, I can only speak of the slow dark. And then the joy in the finding of light, where you long wondered if there was any left."_

"So I did. I'm sorry." She'd heard a few Ghosts over the last few months and they all came to a distinct tone, making for something like unique identities among them – Cayde's sardonic and steadfast Ghost, that stone against the Hunter's wry nature, that Warlock's equally droll one that liked puns, and Vance's own who forever tilted towards whimsy and intellectual banter. Between their 'voices' and their shells, she was getting pretty good at picking out individual Ghosts even when they flittered quickly through the City's sky. So it was strange to realize she knew that she'd thrown it off a little.

_"__You asked a hard question. I'm untroubled, Beck."_

A long, lonely time. That was the unspoken answer. Maybe it was that solitude that gave the little constructs some of their identity. She remembered the reverence in the Ghost's voice as it woke Vance-17 from some ancient mechanical death, and reached up a single finger to pet one of its little nodes. It occurred to her how special that day must have been for the Ghost, and how rare it must be for someone to have witnessed that finding.

"There's Ghosts out there that haven't found anyone yet, aren't there?"

_"__Fewer every day," _it whistled, and the note it used was a mournful one. A dirge for lonely Ghosts left to become only ghosts, scattered on dead landscapes forever out of reach of what they'd tried so hard to seek. A single whistle of loss. _"But let's talk about better things now."_

_. . ._

Dallas crouched at the lip of the short breach inside one of the uninhabited Baigong caves, not so distant from the core of underground Adytum. He shifted slightly, making sure he wasn't blocking the geologist's hovering light. "How's your readings, Leslie?"

She spared him only the briefest glance, shoving her digger's goggles back into place. "Radiation's up a few more points than usual, but we knew that."

He did. They both wore protective armbands, each emitting enough cover to stop particles or wave emissions from attaching to their skin. Wouldn't stop them from using extra water cycles for a full hose-down when they got back to the colony, but that was just insurance. He also knew the curtness in her voice was due to hating mysteries and not hating his increasingly droopy ass. "We've got another twenty before we need to back off."

"Angela still sounding all clear?"

The tall tracker and chief of security was in a nearby sniper's nest, observing the landscape for miles around. "She is, but let's not wait for her to change it up. Get what you can and I'll toss your findings into the shipment tomorrow. The City can chew on it, too."

Leslie made an annoyed sniffing sound that echoed through the narrow crawlspace she was hunkering in, still trying to insert a deep core seismograph needle into hard stone so that she could keep monitoring the area from her cobbled lab inside the colony. Over the last two weeks, they'd gone ranging in a wide circular area to place similar equipment. Since they were so close to home on this one, Adytum's own founder had come out for a walk with her. She almost had a full map ready; this was the last stop. "They won't find anything new." She pulled herself up onto her knees, hands splayed on her thighs as she glowered through him, thinking. "This is all intraplate, Dallas. That's rare. The nearest fault is hundreds of kilometers away. The plates are even further. Meanwhile, I can tell you we've got activity radiating out from specific locations at unspecific intervals. Like triggered faults, but not. Might be a series of deep-forming rifts, but I just don't know."

"Beck says they've got Warlocks pulling incursions all over the place to do the same testing you are. Don't know what the results are, but I'll bet they're seeing the same thing."

She scratched a speck of dirt from her chin. "Guess I should be happy I'm not getting shot at while this is going on, huh?"

"Well, so long as you keep in that twenty minute window..." He gave her a grin, wide under the shaggy mane of hair.

"Then screw off while I finish what I'm doing here."

"Yes, boss." He ambled off to give Angela another set of eyes on the horizon.

. . .

_"__There, _you bitch." Leslie got the 'trode inserted right this time; the thin seismic needle sliding properly into the tiny hole she'd carefully drilled over a slow half-hour. She scooped up the portable monitor and set it to handshake with the new input. And there it was – a full local map of seismic activity. She watched it fill, lighting up the region like ancient Christmas. The sheer spread and varying scale of the graphs it displayed gave her pause, her tongue flicking out to lick absently at her lips. There was a lot more going on under the ground than she'd realized. God, she was going to need time to chew this over.

Her wrist chimed; two minutes before Dallas would come to boot her in the butt. She shook her head and slung the monitor over her shoulder, grabbing up the rest of her scattered tools while looking up and picking out her path. Easiest and quickest way out of the crawlspace was to just scuttle further down into the cave about a hundred meters and then bounce back up a jutting stone feature that doubled as a few stairs. With a gesture, she set the hovering light to follow.

Halfway there she paused again, squinting down into the cavern's darkness. With a snap, the light went out. She squinted again. The other light was gone, too. "Reflection," she muttered, turning the light back on. "Crystal formation, maybe. Come back some time, Les. Could be cool."

"Leslie?"

Dallas' urgent voice cut through her concentration. "Coming!"

. . .

Angela stood watch over the cave entrance as Dallas and the colony geologist emerged. Her tight black braids were knotted back to the nape of her neck, leaving her view wide and clear and forever sharp. The old sniper rifle rested easy in her long hands. "Cutting it close," she said mildly.

Dallas scanned the horizon, the lifted eyebrow asking her for more information.

"Detecting a change in the atmosphere now." She pointed down the stony path. "Let's get to cover before they cut through."

"Bless your good eye," said Dallas, clapping her high on the shoulder as he passed, the little in-joke drawing a thin smile from her. "We're clear inside."

Still fussing with her rucksack as she jogged down into the lees of tall rock formations, Leslie forgot to mention the reflecting light from deep inside the cavern. Not so unusual with the high-impact mobile lightsource she'd been using. Probably not important.

The only reason it caught her eye was because at first that distant glimmer looked _green._


	18. The Waking Dreams

18. The Waking Dreams

. . .

The younger Warlock hurried to catch up with Ikora Rey, his officious tone grating on her nerves. Nasri might be one of the order's favorites in the collation and collection of old tracts, but he was never going to be hers. The Guardian was simply too fussy, and vastly too high-strung. Quick to burn on the field, hence he did better amidst the stacks. "I'm not _doubting _the information, nor what it might mean, but I'm concerned about the source. We've got traces on each responder, each tagged and identified. So where'd all this come from so suddenly? I can't file it if I don't know where it goes."

'_This' _was a surprisingly complete regional seismic census from somewhere in the northwest of China, freshly arrived. She knew perfectly well where it came from, and agreed with Cayde's insistence that direct information on that source was better compartmentalized. It was tempting to use that struggling little colony publicly as a sign of hope and Light, but the risks to the people outweighed such benefits. Ikora kept her face stoic, her brows furrowed deep, her temper always under the utmost of control. Hard lessons from Crucible years; the slow contemplation over easy fury. Sometimes it was still difficult. "Sort it with Miscellany/Classified."

"I'm worried it'll get lost there. This is definitely a vital component to the full picture that's being pieced together. I'm not making any sense. Not saying something right." His voice dipped back for a second, caught up again. "I can't stress the magisterial importance enough, ma'am."

"You're stressing it plenty." She kept her voice mild, with only the slightest chiding edge. It made him pause as he rustled in her taller wake.

"I'm sorry, honorable Vanguard." She caught a glimpse of him trying to bob his head at her. It came off like an homage to one of the Tower pigeons rather than an act of earnest contrition. A corner of her mouth twitched and she made an effort to soften her opinion of him. The young man had a kindly nature if a prying voice, and kindness was its own rarity all too often. "Have you looked it over?"

"Only briefly. I haven't had much time today. Seismology isn't my field, Nasri; I've been waiting for my betters to come forward with their findings. I understand there is no small amount of concern in play here, and I intend to not let this slide."

He kept hurrying along at her side, undeterred and fussing at his tablet. "Well, there's a pattern emerging, Vanguard. It isn't my field, either, but _patterns _are yours..."

She turned to look sharply at him while he continued, missing her gaze. His insistence and his words drove deep into her own instincts. He kept talking, notes flickering as he studied them. "That's why it's so important we keep this in order, it might-"

"Hush. You're onto something, I can hear it in your voice. You're coming at it the wrong way. Still yourself and try to listen to the noise of your mind. Chaos is as important as order, Nasri. Never forget that." She held out her hand. "Now. Show me what you think you see."

Flustered by the sudden fullness of her attention, Nasri nearly dropped the tablet. Hard to believe he had a steady hand with a scout rifle in the field. Recovering himself, he pulled every bit of visual seismic data into a single overlay, showing her the results. "The events start to look like lines; flowing lines, from the southwest to the northwest. Like..." He shook his head, not finding the right words.

She knew them. Once she _saw_, as he had, she knew the right words too well. "Like claws, ragged claws ready to tear up through our stone and soil." She plucked the tablet from his hands, gently touching him on the arm. "Like the _moon." _She looked up, met the other Warlock's young, wide eyes, saw the horrified question growing in them. The answer was more vast than he realized. Recent information from a new effort against the lunar Hive had given them some warning. Whispers ripped from their necropolises – now she saw how close that warning came to being too late. For his sake, she kept her voice calm and her hand on his upper bicep steady. Inside, she calculated how best to get to Zavala quickly; decided who else must be convened. "Nothing natural to this. You've made me see. The Hive aren't increasing their incursions to steal fresh territory, Nasri. This we know. They've _been _here."

She let go of him and stepped away. "Now their Seeders stir awake."

. . .

Beck tossed the inventory tablet onto the table just inside the door, already exhausted. She could get the personal parcels delivered tomorrow. Those few small crates with her name on them were easily picked out from the sizeable pile her current amiable smuggler brought in from the field. Today was for more timely packages; the files Dallas marked for the Warlocks, the perishables, things other families were waiting for and doting on. She could look forward to her own stuff later. Make it more fun. At least she'd be able to tell her Da that everything made it through just fine.

She glanced at the tablet before crossing the room and dropping on the couch to rest. The waveslider would pick up a matching connection with Adytum in another twenty and Vance wasn't due back for hours. Perfect chance to get a catnap.

. . .

She almost slept through the chiming alert, struggled herself awake and got to the ELF before bothering to knock the crusties from her eyes. "Hey, Da," she managed.

"_Hey, honey. Wake you up?" _Freeze-frame grinning filtered through the noise.

"A little." She gave him a heroic yawn, wondering how it looked on his end. "Delivery arrived late this morning, in the middle of some sort of crazy shipment backup. Had to work fast."

_"__Everything make it through alright?"_

She nodded, rubbing a hand hard along the side of her face. There. She felt way more with it, touched the waveslider as if she could touch him. "Didn't get a chance to open everything, but the seismic stuff is out and some other important things. All the boxes look great, scans came out fine. So I haven't seen it, but I know Mom's stuff is alright. I promise." A slide of furrowing brows told her his next question. "I haven't heard back from the Warlocks yet. I mean, I'm pretty down the food chain. But I know they got it and I know they're looking at it seriously." Vance's Ghost gave her multiple assurances on that score. The data caused a minor stir in the halls on arrival, but since it was Vance's patrol night she lacked more detail than that.

_"__Well, good. Sorry you haven't had a chance yet to go through the stuff I sent you." _A clattering sound came in from off-view, mangling his words. The jittering video caught Dallas glancing away, something different in the cast of his lips.

She frowned. "Everything okay?"

_"__Yeah, someone dropped something out in the square, I think. I always tell 'em to watch the noise, 'specially around the dusk patrols." _The vid froze, then restarted as he talked. There was his full face again, brows still knotted a little.

"I remember. The annual event of putting the fear of Angela into the kids." She smiled, let it fade a little at another crashing sound. The video skipped and caught up to him. Dallas was looking off to the side. Another jitter, and he was looking back. No smile. "Da?"

His voice was tinny and distracted. _"Last earthquake was hours ago, too. Honey, they're making one hell of a stupid ruckus out there. I need to go investigate. I'll call you back tonight, so keep an eye on this thing for me." _A pause. _"And hey. Don't forget. I love you. Your Mom did, too."_

"Will be here. Love you, too." The video cut out before the sound did, giving her a flash of Dallas moving away from his end of the connection. Static filled the stream and she shut it off.

A sudden knot that filled her stomach. She put her hand on her belly and frowned. _Just worrying because it's new. Maybe something crashed from their quakes._ _One of the roofs. Venn's folks hate the yearly roofchecks, they probably let it slip. _Her fretting was interrupted by another jaw-crackling yawn and she decided to resume her nap. Let a good doze show her nerves who was boss.

. . .

_"__Beck?"_

"Da?"

The light whistle came, amused. She cracked her eye open to see it hovering above her on the couch. _"Only a humble Ghost, I'm afraid. You've been asleep for some while. I thought you might need to eat."_

She sat up, her skull thumping in the napper's headache. "Vance must be back if you're here. Everything go all right?"

_"__Yes. I apologize, it's quite late. We faced a larger patrol of Fallen than we expected. When we arrived, you were, ah, snoring. I've let you be for a little space of time."_

Something about that didn't sit right with her. She looked across the room to the waveslider, peering through her muzzy, fuzzy eyes as it came back to her. "Did that chime while you were here?"

_"__I'm afraid not."_

The knot came back, tighter and colder. She got up from the couch so quickly that the Ghost dodged out of her way and almost didn't make it. "Can't be right," she said to herself, tapping at the light that would have indicated a missed transmission or a recorded one. She checked the time. She'd been sleeping for three hours; night was long since fallen. "Can't be right, Ghost." Something trembled in her voice.

_"__Hear anything that sets off those instincts of yours..." _muttered Vance in her memory, followed by the Ghost's low and questioning hum.

Her hand trembled and she turned on the waveslider. If he was close, maybe he'd check in. Tell her he forgot to call back. That they were so used to the schedule already.

It responded with only silence. She pinged it again, knowing it wasn't even turned on over there if not in use. Da was always super-cautious about uncontrolled sounds. And again. And again. She was going to break off the button if she pressed any harder. She pulled her hand away, trembling. She thought of the crashing sound and worms filled her throat with their cold fright.

_"__Beck?"_

"I need a favor, Ghost," she said through numb lips, realizing she wasn't thinking clearly and not caring. "Can you get me a ship? Please. I've... I've got to go. I can fly a simple one."

It said her name again, now flanging with concern. "Please!" She turned on it, snapping the word. The rest fell out in a rush, spiraling too high and beginning to crack. "Something's wrong! I need to go!"

_"__I can't." _The words were soft and apologetic.

Knowing her feelings for being misaimed, she took a hard step towards the Ghost. Her eyes were narrowed in abrupt frustration and anger. It didn't back away, still looking at her steadily with its eye. "Why not?"

_"__Without Vance's permission, I could not take an action like that. My will is tied to his."_

"You've helped me before!" She gaped at it, hurt. "Like that party. When we looked for the Monarchy guys. You come with me all the time!"

_"__I did, Beck. I do." _It hovered at eye level.

A dozen old questions sprang up and were suddenly answered in a flash of gold and blue. The grudging Exo. Always painfully distant. But he'd been her friend since arriving, more so than she'd realized. He just couldn't show it right. The Ghost did it for him. "Please," she said one more time, her eyes welling up despite herself. "Get Vance."

"_Already done_. _He's on his way to get his gear once more." _It hovered low and close. _"He plans on flying out immediately."_

"I'm going with you." She managed to make that sound firm. She meant it. She had to see, to be sure. She told herself she'd apologize for snapping at it later, when things were calmer.

_"__I'll let the two of you argue that," _it chimed, trying to soothe her. _"Though I expect you'll win." _Then it lifted high to spin and regard the door.

"Already?"

_"__No..." _Its blue eye dimmed, wanting to answer without refreshing all her concerns. From the alarming data it received from the Ghost at the Hunter's side, it might not be an honest effort. It allowed its tone to become one of gentle warning instead. _"It's Cayde."_


	19. The Killing Moon

19. The Killing Moon

. . .

It was going to be either a fast-moving evac operation or a desperate rescue. Vance-17 didn't know which, not yet. It left him with nothing comforting to say to his Kestrel's passenger – a silent statue of a girl leaving her late mid-teens and heading straight for the grey. Well, at least they were mission-ready for both outcomes. As ready as he could get on short notice, and with official Vanguard backing. He could do that much for the kid. At the moment, he wished he could do a little more. His Ghost was busy multi-tasking the ship and the feeds with the City. It left them in that cold, waiting silence.

The control board of the ship kept refreshing its readout, giving him multiple-angle views of the terrain and his companions. To his left flew the Frontovichka's rust-colored CX. She called the boxy thing her 'little potato.' No one knew why, but there were plenty of theories. On his right, two of her allies kept a staggered, steady pace with him. Guardians he knew vaguely from shared patrols. The one in the Javelin was the laconic Hunter tagged 'Wraith.' He looked like one; the dead-palest human he'd ever seen. A top shot at nearly any range with a hand cannon and he _really _loved his knives. Next to him was a garrulous old-looking Titan in a tricked-out Regulus. Like the Warlock woman, he too spoke through a thick accent. Old German; went by the name Adalwin. It seemed like he and the Frontovichka knew each other from some ways back. Vance never asked about the circumstances of that. Wasn't his business.

But they were all good enough to come. No nonsense, no guff. "For the _devochka,_" said the Warlock after an absorbing pause when he'd called her. Yeah. She understood. Good people.

Back at the City, transport ships were going engines-hot. They'd catch up; they were on double-time and Holliday was going to be stuck to the plasteel and ceramic roof of the hangar until they got back. Good enough motivation right there. When Cayde beat him home and got the news about Adytum's possible lost contact almost as fast as he had, the Hunter immediately set that part of the plan into motion. The Vanguard were just about to put the word out publicly on the Seeder activations – anyone outside the City borders in the region needed to be pulled in _fast_. Guardians, scrappers, survivalists. All in.

Maybe the word wasn't fast enough. The Kestrel's scanners watched the skimming earth below them, tracing the birth of coursing cracks spilling fresh green fire. Not many of them yet, but the worst was still concentrated in the region coming up. Didn't change the mission parameters: Get to site, assess the situation, move civilians. If possible. If not immediately possible, he was going to _make_ it possible. For Beck's sake, he didn't dwell overlong on the worst case scenario. He knew how that would have to be.

The Kestrel's board chimed, drawing his attention. He skimmed the new intel. "We're getting close."

Beck said nothing. He didn't like how pale the tight skin around her eyes was. He didn't like the new scans coming through, either. The cracks were getting bigger on approach, following the landscape and making something like a monstrous freeway leading right up to Adytum. Pure, terrible coincidence. The newly tearing Hive tunnels were beginning to match up with the old cave networks throughout Haixi. The networks the outpost long since burrowed itself into.

_"__Tomb ships underground. Least two we've passed. We can scan them; they're not picking us up yet." _The Warlock's gravelly voice crackled through. _"They grow concentrated in number. My Ghost notes the traces of multiple voids in the earth. Vance, the play?"_

He watched the sky begin to glow a deeper, sicklier green as they raced through the night. "Hell with subtlety; we drop right on the place if we can. Transmat down and sweep."

"If something happened..." Beck's voice came out in a crack and she faltered.

He glanced to his side, eyes dimming. She was looking at him. "Hold, Frontovichka. Beck?"

"If they've been..." An inhale. She straightened up, looking a little bit more _there_. It made him feel better to see it, but her eyes were still too damn wide. "There's a secondary location to withdraw to if something happened. A shelter where they – we- could try to wait out trouble. They're close to some of the old trails, too. Like the one we took." She tapped at the board, adding a set of precise co-ordinates to everyone's readout.

Vance looked them over. From what his precise cybernetic memory could piece together based on the terrain he'd seen, it looked like a solid plan. Dallas and his people were smart enough to prep for the worst. He had enough empathy in his circuits to hope for the best. "You getting those?"

Gutteral German called back. _"I hear. Miss, we save everyone we can."_

"Thank you," said Beck, in the thinnest voice the Exo had ever heard from her.

. . .

The initial scan on approach read the cave entrance as all but cold – traces of a hell of a ruckus, nothing shaking currently. Vance's optics picked up Beck noting the scrapes and tears in the rocks surrounding the concealed gate to the underground colony, her lips tightening with each new detail. No point in dragging it out. "Wraith? Scan the secondary. Core heat trace, see what we can pick up."

The Hunter didn't bother to talk, simply gave a _beep _of concession and peeled away from the group. If anything was left, he'd find it. "Frontovichka, Adalwin."

_"__Ready to transmat down."_

He turned his head to look at Beck. She was looking steadily back at him. "Yeah, I'm not even gonna try to talk you out of coming down," he grunted. "Just gonna ask one thing only. You sure this is what you want to see?"

"I have to." Still thin, still crackling, but forever a tough kid.

He nodded once and swiveled in his seat to grab his go-kit, picking out the spare scout rifle. He didn't like it. It rode light in his thick hands. Perfect choice to bring along. He pushed it towards Beck, who took it with practiced caution. "If we hit trouble, I'm trusting you with this one. Stick close. Something goes jank, you get behind me and aim for the third eye."

After her nod, he told the Ghost to send them down.

_. . ._

There wasn't much to see. The internal gate of Adytum was torn down and shoved to the side. Adalwin stayed there to watch the rear as the three pushed in. Flickering firelight bordered much of the interior of the vast cave hollow. Most of the small homes and other structures were torn down into hot piles. The first dead thing they saw was one of the yaks that tore itself free of the deep stables and got gunned down near what had once been Angela's internal sentry post. It still caused a soft, strangled noise of hurt from Beck. The next dead things were all Hive – a scattered mass of thralls, some with holes in them the size of a fist. A couple acolytes. Someone's sniper rifle had one hell of a kick to it. He bet he knew who. Vance paused by the closest one, looked it over to mark the colors on it, and sent the info on through his Ghost. Lots of sickly yellow. It put his hackles up.

With nods and gestures, the small group pushed further into the now-silent mess. "Venn's house," said Beck once, and her voice had a twinge in it that hurt to listen to. "They hated the roofs we had. I thought that's what I heard. Roofs. They would barter with the family next door every spring to do the re-stabilizing. Santo's Dad." She pointed onward, her hand shaking a little. "My home..."

"I remember, Beck." Vance said it as gently as he could, the emotional effort feeling alien in his mouth but worth the try. The home sat in a topple behind a guttering fire and piles of broken metal. "We can't get to it right now."

"Dallas might be inside."

The Frontovichka shot him a look behind the kid's head. She didn't need to shake her head. They had their Ghosts' scans.

"I know. There's no life signs in here. He might still be inside." Beck looked away again and gave a single hard blink. Her face came together again, going tense with her eyes narrowed. Tracker's eyes. "Wait. No, I'm wrong. He left – left the waveslider and came out to investigate. I know that. He would have seen instantly." She stepped away from the group. Instinctively, Vance put his weapon – that faithful pulse - into the ready-pose. Let the kid think aloud, but he wasn't going to take chances.

She looked down to the ground, then back up, hitching the rifle on her shoulder back into position. "You guys probably track better than me," she said, hesitant.

"Talk us through anyway." The Frontovichka gave her a nod, her own finger close to the trigger of a top-quality scout herself. "I see a few things, but I am better with the ethereal and the divination. What I do not need to _see_. Wraith, now – but he is outside."

"Okay. Lots of movement. Too much mess now to really go step by step." She pointed as she talked. "Angela would have been on watch, so when he stepped out, she would have been the first thing he saw. If... if they came in... No. They didn't come in from outside." She pointed down the cavern maw. "Through the back yak pens. Air could vent through there, kept the stink out. But it meant using flaws in the cave network. That's where _they _boiled through first. So to get away, we popped the gate out. Not Hive. Didn't want a bottleneck to stop the escape. The mess here is the defensive scuffle. The ones that hung back." She lifted her head again, looking at the nearest ruined houses. The color dropped out of her face and her voice went dead. "Used the cover they had while people got out."

"Beck."

"If anyone's in here, they're under the houses closest to the front." She moved toward's one – Venn's again – and tried to reach out for the hot metal, then jerked away to flex her scorched fingertips. "We need to look."

"_Devochka-"_

"I'm not a child!" It came out somewhere between an enraged snarl and a wounded cry. Something audibly locked in Beck's throat, rattling sharp.

The Warlock never batted an eye, just stood with one thumb hooked into her robe's tight belt. "You are not. Certainly not today. I apologize." She smiled with comfort lining her eyes, waving off the apology for snapping that was clear on Beck's face. "Pain speaks today. I can listen and not return it."

Vance looked away as his Ghost transmitted knowledge straight to him. "Wraith's got something."

"Survivors?" Beck stepped away from the rubble, restrained hope relaxing her face as Vance nodded. She opened her mouth to ask another question, the obvious one. Closed it again as she looked back at the fallen homes of Adytum.

Vance hated seeing it. She knew the goddamn answer. If there weren't any Hive slinking around inside the colony proper, it meant the job was done. She _knew _and he knew better than try to tell her otherwise. He made a note to have Ghost run a DNA scan inside the cavern later. Make sure of what they could, so the survivors could at least have answers to similar hard questions.

. . .

The group came on Wraith already acting as a field medic. With a single, sharp look he commandeered whatever extra tools Frontovichka and Adalwin had with them. He passed them on to a stunned looking man, the colony's doctor. He would have been taught to be among the first out, to make sure he could piece together the ones behind. His work was cut out for him; half a dozen sat close in the natural nook of deep earth and scan-confusing metal, many of them with their arms bare and showing still-oozing void burns. At another glance, Adalwin waded in to assist moving someone with a palm-sized chunk scorched out of his shoulder.

The rest of the survivors were milling around, many of them with the startled, empty stares of people that just looked into the worst thing they could imagine and couldn't figure out what the next step was. Vance allowed some grim pleasure at the initial headcount – _way _more people here than he feared. More than half the colony. That was something. His gaze fell on a kid he recognized as their Ghosts spun out to take inventory - Venn, Beck's old friend. He looked half-dead and his face was made of white paper. Nothing physically wrong, but his eyes were far afield and unfocused. Shell-shock. His folks were gone, too.

Beck let out a startled cry when she saw Angela come through to the front of the shelter, followed close by her own daughter. Beck flung herself at the tall woman hard enough to rattle the slung rifle. The colony's guard let her, pulling her tight against the plain armored chestpiece she wore and smoothing the girl's dark hair with a russet brown hand. "I'm sorry, Beck. We got everyone we could. I'll always feel it wasn't enough."

"I know. I saw. I'm glad Tam made it with you." The words were muffled and tiny. She pulled away again, not crying, looking to the other girl with a little smile. Tam smiled back, no bullshit platitudes in it. Just survivors happy to see each other. Mother's girl indeed, Vance noted; this one looked with it despite her arm being in a sling.

Beck cleared her throat. Seeing the survivors, something hard now came into her face and stayed there. Determination, Vance recognized. Like himself, Beck spent her early life being trained for something. Time to use it. Crap way to start, but the kid could do it. He knew her well enough to believe in that.

Angela looked across the top of Beck's head to meet his gold eyes. He tilted his head once. "Ma'am. Transports on the way, ETA three hours max. I can speed them up if we need. Prepped for evac, but they'll have more med on board, too."

"They're going to land at the airstrip," Beck added, finding the solid floor to her voice and working it. "Said it's better to get there physically than try to run transmats over the colony. Can everyone move?"

"Can. Not the real problem. You get any mobile scans coming up? I haven't left the shelter and your Hunter here didn't seem to have much." Angela jerked a dark thumb towards Wraith. "Figure if he had something important, he might have spit it out."

Coin-silver eyes flickered up and a single eyebrow lifted before moving onto the next burn victim. He shook his head, adding his contribution to the discussion.

"Adytum's clean. Multiple sweeps." The Frontovichka shrugged once.

"Yeah. But if you go another couple clicks north to the Pipes proper? They've made the old creek into one hell of a party. Glad you're here, but if we move in a large group, they're going to boil out of the tear they made there." Angela looked dour. "And transmatting from here? Evac will take fire."

"Easy," said Vance, looking at Beck. Let her tell it. She could read the obvious solution on the ready Guardians.

Something in her jaw jumped, then stilled. "Vance and the rest can draw attention, keep them busy. Maybe even get some information for the City. That'll keep most of them from coming at us as we get everyone to the strip. Four is enough to piss off some Hive for a couple hours." She looked steadily at Vance, her voice trying to falter. She didn't let it. "I won't try to come with you. You don't have to tell me. I need to pull the march here."

Angela looked down at Beck, a thin and fierce smile on her face. "Five. I'm going with them, if that's the plan."

Beck's eyebrows lifted, startled. "Angela-"

"You won't need me with you if we keep them busy enough. At worst, there's some thralls looking for the yaks that ran, and I don't think they're up by the high path. Plenty of cover to break line of sight." She pulled Beck close again, speaking low for her alone, knowing the Guardians could overhear anyway and not caring. "I need this. Wouldn't say it if I thought for a second I'd be leaving all of you in real danger."

The girl managed a nod, understanding.

"Dallas." Angela stopped herself, her strong fingers tight on Beck's arms. "We were friends for a long time."

"Since the City."

"Yeah. Long even then. I have lots to tell you sometime when you want it. But for now - you were everything for him. More than the colony, Beck. Put together it was the future he wanted. So he held the back line while I pushed the charge. He holed up with the ranchers to buy us what chance they could afford. They all knew. They were ready. And all Dallas said was '_I'm glad she wasn't here today. No matter what, it means we survived. We won.'_"

Beck made a soft, strangling noise. No tears, but her teeth were biting through her lip.

"He died proud of you. Nothing will _ever _change that." Angela let go, feeling Beck rest her forehead on her shoulder. She looked at Vance again. "You going to object to my demand?"

Vance patted his pulse rifle, steel jaw moving in a gritted warrior's smile. "Hell, no."


	20. The Dark Within - and Below

20. The Dark Within – and Below

. . .

The four Guardians and their ally split off from the shelter first, making sure of the area's safety as best as they could before focusing on the Hive's too-close strikepoint. Angela took point without argument from the others. She knew the terrain. Knew the possible locations for an ambush – theirs or the enemy's. And as they drew further away from the survivors, Vance-17's old but unspoken suspicion became a certainty. A question silently raised when she'd given him a weapon too damn good to be laying around a colony like this.

The arrival of the new Ghost drew only a raised eyebrow from Adalwin. Its shell was a filthy, deep-camouflage set of greys and greens, and it flitted silent and low. Long practice at being unseen, if it didn't just sleep when its Guardian didn't need it at her side. Thing probably never saw the inside of the cavern itself, but it'd stayed close to its master anyway. No wonder there were so many survivors. They really had planned for the worst. Right down to an ace card hidden in the back pocket.

When they made it to a vantage point, one they could use to assess hostile movement and track any flow towards the high path far behind them, Vance stopped next to the colony's tall guardswoman while his friendly trio bickered amongst themselves. Angela worked her sniper rifle, using it to scout further than they could normally see or that the Ghosts could immediately track, glancing up once to tell him to ask his question.

It wasn't much of one. He figured he knew the answer well enough; the colony's lost founder had been no one's fool. He put the question as a statement instead. "Dallas knew."

"'Course he did," she muttered behind the plasteel stock of the well-kept rifle. Her voice was steady and even. The coldness of the old Hunters. "I agreed with him. Stood for the people's petition when they tried to get Consensus to censure those Guardians that'd pushed too hard on the 'little folks.' One against many. Not so different than fieldwork, but harder, and got about as much in the way of permanent results. When they all started their quiet meetings, started talking about leaving the City, I threw in my lot with them. Easy choice. I'd been staying pissed a while."

"Kept it low. Adopted your daughter to fence questions."

"Yeah, well. Wasn't so cold as that, even then. Had some friends in the low town; they couldn't bear to leave but wanted their child to have a chance elsewhere and trusted me. She's my girl now, though. If not by blood? She's my girl. As proud of her as Dallas is of Beck." She kept the rifle at her shoulder, moving in tiny increments to keep something in tracker's view. If he focused his optics down, he could follow her target. A knight and two acolytes, standing high over a knot of thralls. "Let's say I put in my notice with Cayde. Still him in the catbird seat?"

"Still him," he confirmed. "He give you shit?"

"Nope. Just said he'd be there for me if I ever go back."

"He's good." Vance fell into silence for a moment, following her trace and unholstering his favorite weapon. That trusty old gift. "You're not gonna want your pulse back, right? I've gotten partial to it."

She exhaled the tiniest of laughs through her nose, her shoulder drooping as her rifle sight followed and tightened its focus on the distant patrol. The sound of some distant rhythm began to filter towards them through the cold night air, something dead and off-note to the ears of the living. "Keep it. But I'm going to be unfair and give it a price now when it was once just a gift from an old hand to a new one, Titan."

"Name it and figure it for done."

She paused for a long moment, taming the hitch that wanted to catch in her throat. "Ten Hive per each one we lost today." A little, bitter rattle of grim amusement. "If they got an ogre for downing, that doesn't count for extra. Just the one."

He notched the ready weapon to his shoulder by way of answer and sensed the rest of his team following suit. They waited, sensing it was almost go time.

When Angela's sniper sight focused hard on the knight's triple-eyed skull, she pulled the trigger and watched it explode into countless fragments of rot-grey bone and green ichor. It gave her the first real pleasure of the day.

Ten unliving horrors for each and every dead and lost colonist. Ten for each of Beck's hidden tears. Vance marked it fair and fairly done. He figured they'd do that much easily and then some.

Below, the screeching of the enemy rose high and chaotic. It added a grotesque counter-rhythm to the steadier 'song' of the Hive that still spilled out from the breaches. "Hell is all that noise?" he asked his Ghost, disgusted.

_"__They call out hymns to Crota," _it translated, its humming dour. _"They sing of the unholiest and the darkest of days, and for the blessings of their damned kindred. Hail Oryx and hail the night and hail the moon, blah blah."_

"Hail my ass and hail my gun." A wailing pack of thralls caught their scent and surely knew them for the ones that killed their superior. He could hear their approach on the wind. From his right, he smelled a Warlock's cleansing fire spark into hungry life. He pitched his voice low and thrumming; war's voice, vengeance's growl. "Guardians! _Tear them up!_"

. . .

There was a cold voice in the back of Beck's mind, and as cruel as it liked to be, it spoke of necessary things. A thin and far away dull whisper that said to her in a timbre like her own but a little older that _they're just like the yaks right now. Scared and loose and you've got to corral them firmly up the path or they'll just wander all over._

The part of her that could still feel knew that wasn't the whole truth. They were her people; they were just hurt, not mindless herd beasts. They needed help. But if she listened to that softer voice too keenly right now, she'd remember how much everything inside her mind still jangled in pain and loss. She'd be as struck dumb as the people that needed her. So to be what they needed, she stayed shut down and let the cold voice talk. She could feel later. If she did what was necessary, there would be a later. That was the reward. Maybe then she could cry. Maybe that would fill up the hollow places.

That colder voice was in a place to understand Vance's old distance well. In that knowledge was another kind of hurt, and she pushed that away too. Instead, she looked for the other thing she needed – help guiding the frail herd to safety. A second set of eyes, at least. For that she looked first to familiar Venn, pulling up alongside him as she watched the doctor guide a few assistants into moving the wounded. She said his name once, then again.

Venn finally looked at her – through her. "Hi, Beck," he said with false cheer. Then his face contorted and he looked away again. An ugly noise crawled through his throat.

Her hope dropped through her feet, but she tried anyway. "Can you help me watch the group, Venn? It's about an hour's walk if we go fast, but I think it'll be two. We need to be careful. All I need-"

"No," came the strangled word. "I can't. I can't. I can't _think, _Beck!" His voice began to spiral up. The cold voice gave a sharp warning that if he began to shriek, the herd would panic and break. She gripped his arms and gave him a single hard shake, feeling the rifle Vance had given her slide down to her elbow. That brought the boy's gaze back to hers and he settled down enough to manage.

_The boy. _Gooseflesh broke out on her arms. He was almost the same age, but there were now fresh decades between them. She'd jumped forward, had to. She gave herself no choice. But he was crawling down within himself. She felt more alone than ever.

"Beck."

She whirled, startled to hear her name in a voice almost as steady as her own. It was Tam, her hand clenched where it hung from the sling. Tam's dark eyes looked at Venn with sympathy. It occurred to her that Angela's daughter was seeing the same thing she did. Another little pang tried to start before being drowned in the chill; distant childhood romances coming to unpredicted ends. The boy shambled off, rejoining the line. "I can help you. Can't shoot, but I can yell if I see something coming. And I can keep them going in the right direction."

Any other moment, she would have hugged the girl in open relief. Her eyes felt too stuck open and she settled for a hard nod, hoping that Tam could see that, too. "That would help me so much. Let's get them moving. I don't want to waste any more time."

. . .

Wraith was made of blades entire, slicing through air and bone and cold green blood without stopping. Thralls were his launchpad and an approaching knight received a special horn through its topmost eye. All this without more than a second glance from the Hunter, who was still enthralled by his own deadly dance. The knight froze, gurgling and squealing, an armored hand reaching up to claw at the deadly steel driven through its rotted brain before dropping to its knees and dying for once and all.

From time to time, Wraith's dance was licked with fire as the Frontovichka added her power to his. Fire so hot it sparked almost electrical, turning enemy to ash where she went. And then she would float on, dropping seeking grenades of pure inferno and smirking as they incinerated their targets or left them for easy pickings.

Busy with an approaching knot of acolytes of his own, Vance still had enough attention to appreciate what the pair was doing. While he mowed his challengers down without bothering to search for similar elegance, Adalwin charged through the back of that little fray, pushing into at least one Hive so hard that he could see its torso crumple inwards under the Titan's sheer force. Others broke apart, golden bullets of hot, hard light searing through the flood from Angela's roost forever above. No, no one was going to get past them on this day. As far as the Guardians were concerned, Adytum's survivors would march safe. Their Light would burn through this corner of Haixi until they were sure.

From below came the scream of wizards, enraged by the loss of their minions. Vance took the time to wonder what it would be like to squeeze one of those crowned bone heads open. He thought he might get a chance to try.

. . .

Her estimate was close; just shy of two hours before the old airstrip came into view. Blessedly, the lights of approaching ships were already sparking in the distant sky. There was no conflict. Their movement through the air was even and untroubled.

It took that long as Tam kept calling over to her; warning of people coming out of their shock and reeling afresh, trying to wander off to look for what they'd lost. There was an older man that Beck remembered well; she'd tended his grandchild who still held the hand of his mother at the back of the line. His son was one of the ranchers that must have stayed with Dallas, and she had fight to pull the grandfather off of Tam as he started crying and asking where his children were. Neither of them could answer him, even though in their shared glance, they knew. Better to get him to the medics, who could calm him until he could begin to recover for himself.

Sometimes they screamed that they were leaving their things behind. Scraps of memory, child's toys. She tried to tell them that in time, salvagers could come back and seek for what remained. It did little meanwhile, but eventually they calmed and resumed moving.

Beck remembered the boxes of things still waiting for her in the City and almost became lost herself. It was Tam's hand, coming up alongside her for a moment, that steadied her when she needed it most. Tam, who she always knew, but not well. The kindlier voice whispered that amidst all the hell of the day, at least she might find another fast friend by the end of it.

The ships landed when her first rambling charges reached the border of the old airstrip. As City medics and aid Frames poured out of the bays, Beck realized that her duty was not going to end with the ships taking off again. Someone had to keep the fragments of the colony together. Someone was going to have to lead, and keep leading. Even in the City itself. Like Vance had helped her, when she arrived.

This was what Dallas always wanted of her; knew she could do. For him, she could do it. He would never be able to ask anything else, and so that cold place kept her shut down as best it could against the needs of her body. No, this wasn't going to end today. It might not be ending ever.

She swallowed hard as the medics swarmed them, the sounds of activity beginning to dull around her. Distantly, she realized that she was unable to stop the physical effects of shock finally taking over. Everything was cold and numb and at first she missed the touch of one more survivor at her side. When the touch came again, she looked over and realized it was Leslie, the geologist.

"I'm so sorry," whispered the dead-white woman, being pulled away gently by a medic's Frame. "It's all my fault. It's _all my fault._"

. . .

_"__Survivors are loaded now. Headcount matches shelter departure." _Vance knew his own Ghost well enough to know that its clinical tone meant it had its own feelings about the day's events. It found a trace of its old humor, sharp with private anger's edge. _"You've paid twice over for your pulse rifle, Guardian. Going for three and maybe cadge an extra ammo pack for a bonus? Angela came loaded for all the bear in the galaxy, and she's inclined to share."_

"Hey, if they're coming, I'll accommodate them." He flexed his sturdy hands, feeling through his dermal neuroconnections as the drying ichor peeled off. The verdict on wizard skulls was 'squishy, yet satisfying.' Logic knew this wasn't enough to truly pay for the dead. It just lanced the hurt. Still. It meant less Hive to come. It meant a terse message sent to Crota and its children – _The Light knows of consequences, and it will burn you from the surface of both Earth and Moon._


End file.
